—The ceremony of a Roman funeral concluded with a feast, which was usually a supper given to the friends and relatives of the deceased; and sometimes provisions were distributed to the people. (Vid. Adams' Roman Hist., 3rd edit. p. 283.) Basil Kennett, in his Antiquities of Rome, published 1776, further observes (p. 361.) that—
"The feasts, celebrated to the honour of the deceased, were either private or publick. The private feasts were termed silicernia, from silex and cœna, as if we should say suppers made on a stone. These were prepared both for the dead and the living. The repast designed for the dead consisting commonly of beans, lettuces, bread and eggs, or the like, was laid on the tomb for the ghosts to come out and eat, as they fancied they would; and what was left they burnt on the stone."
No authority is cited either by Adams or Kennett for the custom, but your correspondent John ap William ap John might perhaps refer to "Petri Morestelli Pompa Feralis, sive justa Funebria Veterum," with some probability of success in finding the subject there treated at large.
FRANCISCUS.
Barrister (Vol. iv., p. 472.).
—The derivation of this word proposed by W. Y. can only be looked upon as a joke, as he himself seems to regard it. "Roister" can have no more to do with it than "oyster" has with such words as "songster, spinster, maltster, punster, tapster, webster," &c., in which "ster" is the A.S. termination to denote one whose business is "song, or spinning," &c. Thus from the Mediæval Latin "barra" we get "barraster, one whose business is at the bar;" this is confirmed by the old mode of spelling the word, viz., "barrester and barraster." See Spelman's Glossary, v. Cancellarius—
"Dicuntur etiam cancelli septa curiarum quæ barras vocant; atque inde Juris candidati causas illic agentes, Budæo Cancellarii, ut nobiscum Barrestarii."
And again—
"Barrasterius, Repagularis Causidicus."
J. EASTWOOD.