d by
instrumental musicians, and female singers, who chanted the dirge.
These hired attendants, whose noisy sorrow was as genuine as the dumb
grief of our mutes, were succeeded, if the deceased were noble, or
distinguished by personal exploits, by numerous couches containing the
family effigies of his ancestors, each by itself, that the length of
his lineage might be the more conspicuous; by the images of such
nations as he had conquered, such cities as he had taken; by the
spoils which he had won; by the ensigns of the magistracies which he
had filled; but if the fasces were among them these were borne
reversed. Then came the slaves whom he had emancipated (and often with
a view to this post-mortem magnificence, a master emancipated great
numbers of them), wearing hats in token of their manumission. Behind
the corpse came the nearest relations, profuse in the display of grief
as far as it can be shown by weeping, howling, beating the breasts and
cheeks, and tearing the hair, which was laid, as a last tribute of
affection, on the breast of the deceased, to be consumed with him. To
shave the head was also a sign of mourning. It is a curious inversion
of the ordinary customs of life, that the sons of the deceased mourned
with the head covered, the daughters with it bare.

With this attendance the body was borne to the place of burial, being
usually carried through the Forum, where, if the deceased had been a
person of any eminence, a funeral oration was spoken from the rostra
in his honor. The place of burial was without the city, in almost
every instance. By the twelve tables it was enacted that no one should
be burned or buried within the city; and as this wholesome law fell
into disuse, it was from time to time revived and enforced. The
reasons for its establishment were twofold, religious and civil. To
the former head belongs the reason, already assigned for a different
observance, that the very sight of things connected with death brought
pollution on things consecrated to the gods of the upper world. So far
was this carried that the priest of Jupiter might not even enter any
place where there was a tomb, or so much as hear the funeral pipes;
nay, his wife, the Flaminica, might not wear shoes made of the hide of
an ox which had died a natural death, because all things which had
died spontaneously were of ill omen. Besides, it was an ill omen to
any one to come upon a tomb unawares. Another reason was that the
public