The record of the trades and professions of the deceased, which the Roman sepulcral inscriptions contain, often afford a curious insight into the differences of manners and customs between the ancient and the modern world. They supply the deficiencies of the notices in books, or explain obscure and solitary passages in the classics. One difference is obvious. There was no false shame in acknowledging the humble station which the deceased had filled in life. The dealer in pigs is recorded as a “negotiator suarius;” the female greengrocer as a “negotiatrix frumentaria et leguminaria,” who kept a stall beside one of the flights of steps descending to the Tiber.[55] It would not be mentioned now on the tomb of a medical practitioner, that he had begun by practising his art in many market-places “fora multa secutus.”[56] Perhaps the most remarkable instance of the difference between ancient and modern ideas in this respect is furnished by the tomb of Æmilia Irene, whose husband calls himself “stupidus gregis urbani,” the clown of the city company of mountebanks.[57] The profession still finds candidates, but their vocation would hardly be recorded on their funeral monuments. The difference of feeling in ancient times may, perhaps, be accounted for from the circumstance, that these mountebanks exhibited at festivals in honour of the gods, and so acquired a certain respectability. The Christian writer, Arnobius, reproaches the Pagans with this practice. “Mimis dei delectantur stupidorum capitibus rasis, factis et dictis turpibus, fascinorum ingentium rubore.”[58] L. Cornelius Januarius is recorded on his monument to have been the fanaticus of the temples of Isis, Serapis, and Bellona, that is, one of those who were hired by the priests to stimulate the zeal of votaries by wild and frantic gestures, supposed to indicate the inspiration of the divinity.[59] The Grex Romanus inscribe a monument to the actor of pantomimes, Pylades, who first brought the Ion and Troades of Euripides on the Roman stage, and for his admirable acting had received the compliment of decurional ornaments from the most considerable cities of Italy.[60] The sepulcral inscriptions bear testimony to the minute subdivisions of the arts of public amusement. We owe to one of them the knowledge, that when Greek mimes (farces) were performed to the populace at Rome, a vivâ voce explanation in the Latin language answered the purpose of a translated libretto.[61] Ursus Togatus glorifies himself in his inscription, as the first who had exhibited feats of graceful dexterity with a ball of glass, for the amusement of those who frequented the baths of Trajan, Agrippa, Titus, and Nero.[62] The ancient sleight-of-hand men appear to have at least rivalled the Indian jugglers. One of them has even been thought worthy of commemoration by the Byzantine historian, Nicephorus Gregoras.[63] He could throw up a glass-ball into the air and catch it as it fell on the point of his finger-nail, the end of his elbow, and other parts of his body. Another inscription boasts that the subject of it could transfix an arrow in its flight with another arrow. Instances are recorded of early proficiency in theatrical arts. Eucharis, who died at the age of fourteen, declares herself on her tomb to have been
Docta, erodita pæne Musarum manu;
Quæ modo nobilium ludos decoravi choro
Et Græca in scena prima populo apparui.
A still more remarkable instance of precocity is that of L. Valerius, who in his thirteenth year was crowned in the Capitol in a contest of Latin poetry.[64] The theatrical inscriptions, which generally relate to Greeks, are of a boastful character, foreign to the genius of the Romans. The death of Vitalis, an actor and mimic, must have been a public calamity, “eclipsing the gaiety of nations,” if we believe his epitaph.
Me viso rabidi subito cecidere furores;
Ridebat summus me veniente dolor.
Non licuit quenquam mordacibus urere curis,
Nec rerum incerta mobilitate trahi.
Vincebat cunctos præsentia nostra timores,
Et mecum felix quælibet hora fuit.
Fingebam vultus, habitus ac verba loquentum
Ut plures uno crederes ore loqui.
Ipse etiam, quem nostra oculis geminabat imago,
Horruit in vultu se magis esse meo.
i. e. the person imitated was startled to find the imitation look more like him than himself![65] One instance, however, of a different kind we may quote, which for its expressive simplicity might be placed on the monument of a Macready. INGENUUM COMŒDUM, PROPTER SINGULAREM ARTIS PRUDENTIAM ET MORUM PROBITATEM. The latter quality appears to have been rare among theatrical performers, and we can forgive the fierce zeal of the Christian Fathers against the stage, when we read on the tomb of a girl who was training for pantomime,—
Cujus in octava lascivia surgere messe
Cœperat, et dulces fingere nequitias.[66]
Before leaving what may be called the external peculiarities of Roman sepulcral inscriptions, we may notice the custom of placing on the tomb representations of the implements employed by the deceased in his occupation. The tomb of a baker, discovered a few years since near the Porta Maggiore at Rome, was constructed in the form of an oven, and sculptured on it were the loaves, the kneading trough, and the mill worked by an ass.[67] From the tomb of Cossutius, a carpenter, we learn the form of the square, plumb-line, compasses, callipers, and chisel, the last being exactly in the form of the celt, about which antiquaries have learnedly written. The ornatrix, or tirewoman, announces her vocation in life by a mirror, with a phial of perfume; the tabellarius, or postman, by a theca graphiaria, or pen-and-ink case; the mensor ædificiorum, by a decempeda, or ten-foot rule; the cultrarius, or cutler, by knives. The occurrence of these emblems on Christian tombs is said to have given rise to the reputation of unauthorized martyrdoms, the cutler being supposed to have been flayed alive, the wool-carder to have been torn to pieces with iron combs, the blacksmith to have been tortured with the forceps, the carpenter to have been sawn in two.[68] This custom continued in the middle ages. A tombstone in the museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society has a bell and a melting-pot engraved upon it, indicating that it covered the tomb of a bell-founder, and similar emblems have been found in Bakewell Church and elsewhere.[69] At the present day military and naval monuments alone display professional emblems.
It does not appear possible from the inscriptions on tomb-stones to deduce any inference respecting the average length of human life in the centuries which they embrace. They usually record with exactness the age of the deceased; often with the mention of the months, days, and hours; but they are only fragments of the record of mortality as it originally existed, and that record was itself very imperfect. Vast numbers were, of course, burnt or buried, to whom no monument was raised. There were pits without the Esquiline Gate, in which the common people were buried promiscuously. According to the statement of Ulpian, who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus, registers of population, age, sex, disease and death had been kept with exactness by the censors for ten centuries, and from observations grounded on these, according to Dr. Bissett Hawkins’s Medical Statistics,[70] from which I quote, the expectation or mean term of human life among the Romans was thirty years; while that of England, according to Mr. Finlaison, is fifty for the easy classes of society, and forty-five for the whole population. I do not put much faith in bills of mortality of the time of Servius Tullius, considering the rarity even of historical documents in the early ages of Rome. The monuments, too, are, in a large proportion of cases, to military men, who appear to have been cut off at very early ages. But many reasons may be given why the average of life should be shorter than in England. There was no provision for the poor among them, unless the irregular profusion of congiaria can be called so; there were no public hospitals; the city was in many parts unhealthy; their clothing not favourable to cleanliness, though remedied, in some measure, by the bath; and life was often shortened by suicide, which was regarded as venial if not meritorious. The average yielded by the inscriptions would certainly be low; I have noticed one death at 102 years,[71] 90 of which were passed without disease, and one at 100,[72] one at 92,[73] but these are rare. Valerius Julianus inscribes a monument to his son, who was three years old, and his mother (mammulæ), who was 80.
Dispara damna lege Parcarum et stamina dispara;
Hæc ridenda mihi est, hic lacrymandus erit.
Hæc namque emeritos bis quadraginta per annos
Vixit; at hic tertio Consule natus obit.
Cur modo tam præceps, iterum tam sera fuisti
Funeris amborum dic rea Persephone.
Vix lucem vidisse satis qui vivere posset;
Vivere quæ nollet vix potuisse mori.[74]