Among funeral processions that of the ancient Roman nobiles is remarkable. The dead man was accompanied by all his ancestors, represented by persons resembling them in form and stature and wearing wax portrait masks (imagines)[368].
These imagines maiorum stood in the alae of the atrium of the houses of Roman nobles; they were brought out and carried in the funeral procession. The origin of this strange custom has been explained by O. Benndorf. Just as, according to antique belief, the dead lived on in the grave, which was, therefore, made into a kind of dwelling-place for them, so, it was believed, that by producing the likenesses of those who inhabited this dwelling-place, it was possible to keep in touch with their personalities[369]. Hence the setting-up of the imagines in the atrium. When they were brought out to accompany the recently departed in the funeral procession, it meant that his ancestors were actually following his body. The descriptions which have come down to us are in reference to public funerals, or those of the wealthier classes who could afford to pay for sumptuous burials of an ostentatious character; but there is reason to believe that among the less well-to-do the same rites, though on a far more modest scale, were observed; for it has been rightly remarked that
all periods of the history of Roman burial are unified by the belief in the continued existence of the dead, and in his ghostly participation in the life of the family and the community, and by the consequent scrupulous care about proper burial, and the maintenance of right relations with the spirits of dead ancestors. The quick and the dead of ancient Rome were in a more than usually intimate communion[370].
The sacred dance, as a mark of honour to the deceased, is therefore not likely to have been neglected among the poor any more than among the rich.
V
We come now to consider some examples of dancing as a mourning or burial rite among some of the savage and semi-civilized peoples. What will strike us here as strange are the contradictory ideas regarding the purpose of the rite; but it is just these opposing ideas that will be found to be so instructive. Various customs in existence at the present day among civilized peoples are explained in the light of the ideas and practices now to be considered.
There is no doubt that the object of this rite among uncivilized races which is most common now is the honouring of the departed; but it is probably true to say that this represents the latest development regarding its purpose, and that the other reasons for which it was performed take us back to earlier stages of the growth of savage thought regarding the departed.
We will begin by offering examples of this most developed idea and purpose of the rite.
In writing of the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur who are remarkable for their pathetic reverence for their dead, Tylor says:
When a Ho or Munda has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones in her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or a relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed. The bones are carried to all the dead man’s favourite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food...[371].