5.3 Death

How far can the understanding of the way death was performed in the Classical world help our understanding of its role in modern society and more generally of the way humans interact in the contemporary world? The way we celebrate death reflects notions and beliefs that belong to the living. In other words, funerary practice reveals a range of social practices and beliefs, from attitudes towards body transformation to public and private performance, addressing a transition from a status of the living to a status of the dead. The way individuals and societies celebrate death reflects therefore their cultural and social identity.

EPQ Suggested Questions

In your EPQ project you may want to focus on one of the following questions:

How far were notions about status and identity reflected in Greek and Roman funerary practices?
How was death portrayed in Greek tragedy?
How far did Roman funerary practices change over the centuries and how did the changes reflect broader religious transformations in Roman society?

Sources

Hope, V., 2007. Death in ancient Rome: a sourcebook. Routledge.

Material culture

Architecture

The mausoleum of Augustus, Rome (Italy)
The mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Turkey (reliefs are now at the British Museum in London, UK)

Visual culture

Attic terracotta geometric krater (open 5.3 Attic Geometric Crater pdf)
Attic gravestone (open 5.3 Attic Gravestone pdf)
Gravestone of Titus Calidius Severus (open 5.3 Roman gravestone pdf)
Woman funerary portrait from Noricum (open 5.3 Roman gravestone from Noricum pdf)
Mummy of Artemidorus (open 5.3 Mummy of Artemidorus pdf)
Silver portrait of Livia from Herculaneum (Italy) (open 5.3 Livia pdf)
Statue of a Roman aristocrat holding busts (open 5.3 Barberini statue pdf)
Roman sarcophagus with fishermen and Orpheus (open 5.3 Orpheus sarcophagus pdf)
Funerary stele of Regina (open link)

Resources

Carroll, M., 2006. Spirits of the dead: Roman funerary commemoration in Western Europe. Oxford University Press.
Chapman, R.W., Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., Randsborg, K., Audouze, F., Renfrew, C., Schlanger, N., Sherratt, A., Taylor, T. and Ashmore, W. eds., 1981. The archaeology of death. Cambridge University Press.
Dillon, M., 2003. Girls and women in classical Greek religion. Routledge.
Edwards, C., 2007. Death in ancient Rome. Yale University Press.
Garland, R., 2001. The Greek way of death. Cornell university press.
Gregory, J., 2008. A companion to Greek tragedy. John Wiley & Sons.
Kinzl, K.H. ed., 2010. A companion to the Classical Greek world (Vol. 73). John Wiley & Sons.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C., 1996. " Reading" Greek death: to the end of the classical period. Oxford University Press.
Stewart, P., 2003. Statues in Roman society: representation and response. Oxford Studies in Ancient Cult.
Toynbee, J.M., 1996. Death and burial in the Roman world. JHU Press.

Online resources

Perseus digital library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
The Grove Art Online: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/
Image database of ancient stone monuments, including Roman funerary Stelae (open link)
Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece at the Metropolitan Museum (open link)
The Living and the Dead - Roman Funerary Monuments, YouTube series by the Open University (open link)