Funeral Rites
Funeral rites took place at home and at the place of burial, which was located outside the city to avoid the pollution of the living. The funeral procession (pompa funebris) transited the distance between the two.
A professional guild (collegium) of musicians specialized in funeral music. Horace mentions the tuba and the cornu, two bronze trumpet-like instruments, at funerals.
Read more about this topic: Roman Funerals And Burial
Famous quotes containing the words funeral and/or rites:
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)