Editing Religion in ancient Rome (section)

== Funerals and the afterlife ==
{{Main|Roman funerals and burial}}
[[File:Stele Licinia Amias Terme 67646.jpg|thumb|This funerary [[stele]], one of the [[Early Christian inscriptions|earliest Christian inscriptions]] (3rd century), combines the traditional abbreviation ''D. M.'', for ''Dis Manibus'', "to the [[Manes]]," with the Christian motto ''Ikhthus zōntōn'' ("fish of the living") in Greek; the deceased's name is in Latin.]]

Roman beliefs about an afterlife varied, and are known mostly for the educated elite who expressed their views in terms of their chosen philosophy. The traditional care of the dead, however, and the perpetuation after death of their status in life were part of the most archaic practices of Roman religion. Ancient votive deposits to the noble dead of Latium and Rome suggest elaborate and costly funeral offerings and banquets in the company of the deceased, an expectation of afterlife and their association with the gods.<ref>Smith, in Rüpke (ed.), 35–6: Rome's Latin neighbours significantly influenced the development of its domestic and funerary architecture.</ref> As Roman society developed, its Republican nobility tended to invest less in spectacular funerals and extravagant housing for their dead, and more on monumental endowments to the community, such as the donation of a temple or public building whose donor was commemorated by his statue and inscribed name.<ref>Smith, in Rüpke (ed.), 35–6.</ref> Persons of low or negligible status might receive simple burial, with such grave goods as relatives could afford.

Funeral and commemorative rites varied according to wealth, status and religious context. In Cicero's time, the better-off sacrificed a sow at the funeral pyre before cremation. The dead consumed their portion in the flames of the pyre, Ceres her portion through the flame of her altar, and the family at the site of the cremation. For the less well-off, inhumation with "a libation of wine, incense, and fruit or crops was sufficient". Ceres functioned as an intermediary between the realms of the living and the dead: the deceased had not yet fully passed to the world of the dead and could share a last meal with the living. The ashes (or body) were entombed or buried. On the eighth day of mourning, the family offered further sacrifice, this time on the ground; the shade of the departed was assumed to have passed from the world of the living into the underworld, as one of the ''di Manes'', underworld spirits; the ancestral ''manes'' of families were celebrated and appeased at their cemeteries or tombs, in the obligatory [[Parentalia]], a multi-day festival of remembrance in February.<ref>Scheid, in Rüpke (ed.), 267, 270–71.</ref>

A standard Roman funerary inscription is ''Dis Manibus'' (to the Manes-gods). Regional variations include its Greek equivalent, ''theoîs katachthoníois''<ref>From a Romano-Athenian veteran's tomb; [[René Cagnat|Cagnat, René]], ''Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes''. Paris 1906–27, 3.917.</ref> and [[Lugdunum]]'s commonplace but mysterious "dedicated under the trowel" ''(sub ascia dedicare)''.<ref>Haensch, in Rüpke, (ed.) 186–7.</ref>

In the later Imperial era, the burial and commemorative practises of Christian and non-Christians overlapped. Tombs were shared by Christian and non-Christian family members, and the traditional funeral rites and feast of ''novemdialis'' found a part-match in the Christian ''Constitutio Apostolica''.<ref>This recommended Christian commemorative rites on the 3rd, 9th & 30th days after death.</ref> The customary offers of wine and food to the dead continued; St Augustine (following St Ambrose) feared that this invited the "drunken" practices of Parentalia but commended funeral feasts as a Christian opportunity to give alms of food to the poor. Christians attended Parentalia and its accompanying [[Feralia]] and [[Caristia]] in sufficient numbers for the [[Second Council of Tours|Council of Tours]] to forbid them in AD 567. Other funerary and commemorative practices were very different. Traditional Roman practice spurned the corpse as a ritual pollution; inscriptions noted the day of birth and duration of life. The Christian Church fostered the veneration of saintly [[relic]]s, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to "new life".<ref>Saltzman, in Rüpke, (ed.), 114–116.</ref>
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