TJw Roman Cemetery of Uriconium. 37 



which it was supposed would be required to pay the boatman 

 Charon for the passage over the river Styx. In the case of 

 persons of substance, incense was burnt in the hall, which was 

 often decked with branches of cypress, and a keeper was 

 appointed, who did not quit the body until the funeral was 

 completed. The public having been invited by proclamation to 

 attend the funeral, the body was carried out on the seventh 

 day, and borne in procession, attended by the relatives, friends, 

 and whoever chose to attend, accompanied by musicians, and 

 sometimes with dancers, mountebanks, and performers of 

 various descriptions. With rich people, the images of their 

 ancestors were carried in the procession, which always passed 

 through the Forum on its way to the place of burial, and some- 

 times a friend mounted the rostrum and pronounced a funeral 

 oration. In earlier times the burial always took place by night, 

 and was attended with persons carrying lamps or torches, but 

 this practice seems to have been afterwards neglected ; yet the 

 lamps still continued to be carried in the procession. Women, 

 who were called prceficce, were employed not only to howl their 

 lamentations over the deceased, and chant his praises, like the 

 Irish keeners, but to cry also ; and their tears, it appears, were 

 collected into small vessels of glass, and this circumstance is 

 termed, in some of the inscriptions found on the Continent, 

 being " buried with tears," — sepultus cum lacrymis, — and the 

 tomb is spoken of as being "full of tears." — tvmvl . lacktm . 



PLEN. 



The next ceremony was that of burning the body. In the 

 earlier ages of their history the Romans are said to have buried 

 the bodies of their dead entire, without burning ; and there 

 seems to be no doubt that, at all events, the two practices, 

 burning the body and cremation, existed at the same time, but 

 the latter appears to have become gradually more fashionable, 

 until few but paupers were buried otherwise. In the age of 

 the Antonines the practice of cremation was finally abolished in 

 Italy, but the imperial ordinances appear to have had but little 

 effect in the distant provinces, where the two manners of burial 

 continued to exist simultaneously. Both are accordingly found 

 in the Roman cemeteries in Britain, in interments which were 

 undoubtedly not those of Christians. Perhaps the practices 

 varied in different parts of the island, according to the usages 

 of the country from which the colonists derived their origin. 

 It is a circumstance worthy of remark that, as far as discoveries 

 yet go, no trace has been met with of burials in the Roman 

 cemeteries of Uriconium, otherwise than by burning the dead. 



The funeral pile, pyra, was built of the most inflammable 

 woods, to which pitch was added, and other things, which often 

 rendered this part of the ceremony very expensive. An in- 



