In Antiquity
In ancient Greece and Rome, various associations of a fraternal nature, as well as religious groups, political clubs, and trade guilds, functioned as burial societies. Terms for these include hetaeria, collegium, and sodalitas. The by-laws of one burial society are preserved by an inscription dating to A.D. 136. Discovered at Lanuvium, the lex collegia salutaris Dianae et Antinoi ("By-laws of the Society of Diana and Antinous") details the cost of joining the society, monthly fees, regulations for the burial of members, and the schedule for the group's meetings and dinners. Inscriptional evidence exists for burial societies throughout the Empire, not just in the city of Rome.
One of the ways that the Romans made sense of the earliest Christian groups was to think of them as associations of this kind, particularly burial societies, which were permitted even when political conflict or civil unrest caused authorities to ban meetings of other groups; Pliny identified Christians collectively as a hetaeria.
Read more about this topic: Burial Society
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