by individual enterprise. There were men in most of the Italian cities who let out rheda, which were roomy fourwheeled carriages, and cisia, a species of light two-wheeled gig, rather like the bagherino of modern Tuscany, as well as the horses to draw them. The offices of these were just without the city gates (for driving within the walls, except in the case of the vestals, was almost unknown), and here the bargain was made, either for changing carriage and horses from stage to stage, or for making the whole journey with the same team. No doubt a man might also use his own conveyance, if he had one, providing it with horses or mules hired along the road.

In the latter days of the republic great pomp began to be affected by wealthy travelers, and this increased to such a pitch that Nero's regular train consisted of a thousand wagons, while Poppaa took with her five hundred she-asses for convenience of bathing in their milk, and had horses shod with gold. "Everybody travels, nowadays, with a troop of Numidian cavalry in front, and a band of scouts sent on ahead," is the satirical observation of Seneca. 66 They all have mules loaded with vessels of glass and murrha and sculptured work of famous craftsmen, for it would be beneath a man's dignity to load his packs with stout articles which would bear knocking about."

The traveler of consequence always avoided, if possible, passing a single night at an inn. On the incessantly frequented route from Rome to Naples, he was almost sure to have either a villa of his own, or a friend whose hospitality he might demand. Failing these, he would take tents along and camp out, particularly in summer time; and doubtless it was the absence of distinguished patronage which made the inn of those days both so comfortless and so cheap. It is certain, however, that places of public entertainment, such as they were, existed all along the most

frequented roads of the empire, and that in some cases they were aided from the public treasury. Proprietors in the neighborhood often built them on speculation, letting them to landlords, or managing them through their own slaves. At certain places there would be a choice of inns, and Horace remarks on the rival establishments of Forum Appii.

Popinæ, or restaurants, both those where a regular table was laid, and the humbler kind where a lunch was taken standing, are mentioned so often as to lead us to infer that the fashion of renting furnished rooms and going out for one's meals was as common in ancient Rome as it is in Latin countries now. At the rural inns it was customary to pay an inclusive sum for board and lodging; and indeed one hardly sees how items could have been specified, when the total bill amounted to a half as (about seven tenths of a cent), which Polybius says was the regular charge, in his day, for a night's entertainment in the inns of Cisalpine Gaul.

Highway robbers abounded in the outlying provinces of the empire, and in all mountainous and forest regions; but those who went southward from Rome by day, during the first century of our era, were in general safe enough, owing to the very press of travel upon the road. There was a constant succession of those caravans described by Seneca, whose owners aped imperial luxury. The expense thus incurred was often literally ruinous, and many of those who had thus flaunted upon the road ended their days as gladiators, a profession which Nero had made rather fashionable.

Great stress was laid upon travel as putting a finishing touch to the education of a distinguished youth, whose mind was supposed to be expanded by the mere sight of novel scenes; and rich young Romans were continually sent to study for a year or more in the famous schools of Greece. Thither, too, went the Roman of leisure, either as a reli

gious pilgrim to some famous temple or shrine, or as a mere tourist; for every self-respecting citizen of the later republic felt that he ought once, at least, to have seen the beautiful monuments of the elder land. Relics of demigods and heroes, particularly those which claimed connection with that great epic war under the walls of Troy which had led to the building of Rome, were objects of especial interest and awe.

But while the Roman of the Augustan age had often a cultivated and even critical taste in matters of art, his enjoyment of the beauties of nature was much more limited. Those grander scenes and phenomena of the outer world which are so thrilling to the modern mind were for the most part uncomfortable and repugnant to him, though there are examples of landscape art which warn one against too sweeping a statement. Certain of the gentler aspects and humbler charms of nature, cool springs with mossy banks, broad green meadows, quiet sheets of water, shady groves, and fair garden-beds, he did love intensely, and such he would have about his country home, or if, like Atticus, he were rich enough, even inside the city; but his villa was his first extravagance, and always his peculiar pet and pride. It is difficult to say how many distinct country properties a Roman of rank might not possess. If Cicero and Pliny, who have told us so much about their various installations, are to be taken as representatives, one would say that four or five huge country-seats and as many lesser villas would be a moderate allowance, while the dates of the letters of these two show how incessantly they moved from one place to another. Sometimes, no doubt, they did so at the bidding of their affairs; often they were impelled by mere restlessness and love of change.

"Hence are vague journeys undertaken," says Seneca in his discourse on Tranquillity of Soul, "and divers coasts

are visited; but everywhere, whether on land or on sea, we discover that levity of mind which is always disgusted with the present. Now we seek Campania, and anon, aweary of its delicacies, we make for the wilderness, and explore the forests of Bruttium and Lucania. But the craving for something pleasant revives in the desert, and we must needs have some relief from the tedious squalor of those rude spots. Tarentum is the place! We praise its harbor, its exquisite winter climate, and its fine old mansions. Finally we bend our steps toward the City of Cities. Too long have our ears missed the din of its streets, the plaudits of its theatre. We are ready even for a taste of human blood. Thus journey follows journey, and scene succeeds scene; and so it is, as the poet Lucretius says, that 'every man would from himself escape.'"

Nearly all we know of the funerals of the earliest period is that they invariably took place at night. Later, when there had come to be much emulation in the matter of funeral expense and display, the obsequies of distinguished people, at least, were often celebrated in the daytime; and it was reserved for the Emperor Julian to prescribe a return to the solemn custom of old by an edict beginning with the simple words, "Death is rest, and night is the time for rest.” The lighted torch, however, always held its place in the ceremonial, as it does for the most part in Latin countries to this day, and thus it became the symbol both of wedding and of burial.

Grand public funerals were the exclusive privilege of eminent men and the scions of great families, and the funeral procession was so arranged as to offer an opportunity for the most pompous exhibition of wealth, political honors, and long descent. When a man of rank, whether a patrician or one of the official nobility, had breathed his last, his eyes were closed by the nearest of

his by-standing relatives, while the rest lifted up the conclamatio, or traditional cry of lament, "Ave atque vale!" (Hail and farewell!) The friends then retired, and the body was left in the hands of professional undertakers, who washed, anointed, and robed it richly, set between its teeth a coin to pay the ferryman Charon, and laid it on a couch of state in the atrium of the dwelling, with feet turned toward the entrance door. Incense was then burned all about, either in trays or upon miniature altars, and flowers were used in profusion. The insignia of office of the deceased, if he had filled public offices, were displayed, and the crowns, if any, which he had won in the public games, or which had been decreed him by the Senate for triumphis upon the sterner field of war. Boughs of cypress or pine were hung up in the vestibule as a token of mourning, and the lying in state lasted from three to eight days, during which time the corpse was visited by kindred, clients, and friends. If the interment or cremation were to be private, the remains were then quietly taken away. Otherwise a herald summoned those who were expected to join the procession by the solemn and immemorially ancient formula: "Ollus Quiris leto datus. Exsequias, quibus est commodum, ire jam tempus est. Ollus ex ædibus effertur." The order of the procession was thereupon arranged by a master of ceremonies, called a designator, and it closely resembled a triumphal march. First came a band of music, with trumpets, pipes, and horns, and immediately after this the hired female mourners intoning a sonorous elegy on the deceased. Next, exactly as in the procession which introduced the games of the circus, came dancers and mimes, to whom a singular freedom of speech and action, and even of jest, was allowed. In the fourth place came the most significant and imposing part of the whole stately ceremony, the procession of ancestors in their images

or likenesses. When a man of note died, a wax mask was immediately taken of his features, and colored in exact resemblance to his look in life and health. This mask was affixed to a bust of wood or marble, inclosed in a marble or alabaster shrine, and set up in the atrium of the deceased. On the occasion of a public funeral, these wax masks were removed, or fac-similes of them were made, and worn by professional actors hired for the occasion, who might resemble the distinguished dead in stature, and strive further to impersonate them in dress and action. The dead man seemed thus to be accompanied and ushered to his rest by a guard of honor composed of all his famous forbears. Nor was family pride always content with the images of historic personages merely, but mythical ancestors were also introduced, and Tacitus tells us that Eneas and all the kings of Alba Longa walked in the funeral train of Drusus. The same great writer has left us one of his most thrilling descriptions of the funeral, sixty-four years after the battle of Philippi, of the aged Junia, niece of Cato, wife of Cassius, and sister of Marcus Brutus. "The images of twenty most illustrious families were carried before her," he says, "but Brutus and Cassius were conspicuous" (nay, his word is stronger, -præfulgebant, were illustrious) "by their absence;" being still under attainder on account of their complicity in the death of Cæsar.

After the ancestors followed the memorials of the dead man's public achievements; then torch-bearers and lictors with lowered fasces; and after these the body itself, borne by the sons upon a bier in early times, but subsequently extended upon a car of state, clad in magnificent robes, or inclosed in a hearse, which was surmounted by a sitting effigy of the deceased. Last walked the mourners, all in black,—the women without ornaments, the men without any insignia of office; the sons with veiled

faces; the daughters unveiled, but with streaming hair; freedmen, and slaves who might have been liberated by the will of the deceased, — the latter with shaven heads, - clients, friends, the public generally, just as in a funeral of today. Custom imposed no check on the expression of grief, and flowers and severed locks of hair were freely scattered upon the passing bier.

If there were to be a public oration, the funeral procession moved first to the forum, where the speech was delivered. In other cases, an informal eulogy was delivered at the place of interment or cremation, which was almost invariably outside the city walls. All the great highways leading out of Rome had come, in the last centuries of the state, to be lined with family tombs, some of them of vast extent and of infinite splendor. Certain noblemen had private burialplaces of great beauty, shady with trees or gay with flower-beds and fountains, upon their suburban estates; and slaves and other dependents of the family were laid, humbly, indeed, and at a respectful distance, but within the same precinct as their betters. The tomb was conceived of as at least the temporary dwelling-place of the dead, and was often very richly furnished. The walls were frescoed; there were lamps and candelabra, both for illumination and decoration, and vases of beautiful shape and workmanship adorned the walls. The warrior had his weapons beside him, the civil officer his badges, the great lady her ornaments and toilet articles, the child its toys. All these things helped to give the tomb a homelike appearance, both on the grievous day of burial, and on those subsequent days when religious services were held there in memory of the dead. The remains were either simply deposited with the couch on which they had been carried to the grave, or they were inclosed in one of those sculptured sarcophagi of which so many beautiful examples are still to be seen.

The religious rites which followed included both a consecration of the new resting-place and a purification of the bereaved relatives from their contact with death. A nine days' mourning followed, and was concluded by an offering to the manes and a funeral feast; after which the black robes were laid aside, and the ordinary activities of life resumed. If there were funeral games, these too were celebrated originally on the ninth day.

In cases of cremation, the simpler and probably older fashion was to excavate a grave, three or four feet deep, and fill it with fuel. This was a bustum. The corpse was extended upon it, the fuel kindled; the bones and ashes fell into the cavity with the coals of the dying fire, and the former were subsequently collected in an urn, which was set in the midst of the ashes. The earth was then filled in and heaped above in a tumulus, or barrow, and the place was inclosed. Cremation upon the rogus, or funeral pyre, was a much more stately and costly affair. It took place upon unconsecrated ground, but near the family burial-place. The pyre was often of elaborate and artistic construction, and all manner of articles of luxury, spices, garments, ornaments, and rich wares of every kind were laid thereon by friends, as last gifts to the deceased, and consumed in the general conflagration. The coals were then quenched with water or wine, and a few days' exposure to the Italian sun and air sufficed to dry the ashes, which were collected in an urn or other cinerarium and deposited in the tomb before the end of the nine days' mourning.

Such were the obsequies of the rich and great. The masses laid their dead away silently, as they have done in all time. For the comparatively well to do there were the vast systems of columbaria, associated in our minds chiefly with their hallowed usage by Christians in the catacombs, but originally a pagan

fashion, dating from early Roman times. These columbaria were often constructed and owned by joint-stock companies, who undertook to keep them in order, and sold or let the separate niches as required. Or a great nobleman would build a columbarium for the reception of his slaves, by way of adjunct to the family tomb, as may still be seen in the burying-place of the Volusii, near Perugia. For the very poor there were simply vast common pits, into which the bodies were flung, uncoffined, while the remains of malefactors, even in Horace's time, were exposed, unburied, to the action of the elements and to the birds and beasts of prey.

All through the republican period, and probably from yet earlier times, a vast common burial-ground extended outside the Viminal and Esquiline gates of Rome. Mæcenas seems to have been the first to appropriate to private uses a portion of this ancient cemetery, which he transformed into a garden or park. His example was followed by Pallas, a freedman of Claudius, and by others, until the whole region became a place of gardens, like the Pincian, and the recent dead were probably pushed further afield.

As between burial and cremation, the former was the ancient Oscan and Latian practice, and the innate prejudices of the Latin race appear always to have been in its favor; but the two customs flourished side by side in Rome from an early historic period. The expansion of the city and the vast increase in its population created powerful sanitary reasons in favor of cremation, but certain great families, like the Cornelii, stood out against it to the end. The underlying thought in burial appears to have been that of deep rest on the bosom of the common mother; in burning, that of consuming the corruptible flesh in sacrifice, while the spirit ascended in vapor to the heaven out of which it came. The

latter idea seems, at first sight, the more pious of the two; but their full belief in the resurrection of the body caused it to be rejected by the early Christians, and with the conquest of the Roman Empire by Christianity the burning of man's mortal relics went wholly out of use.

It remains to say a word concerning Roman feasts and services in commemoration, one might almost say in worship, of the dead. These were numerous and religiously observed, some public and some private. To the former belong the Parentalia, which lasted from the 13th to the 21st of February inclusive. Their celebration began with a service of the vestal virgins at the grave of Tarpeia, and while they continued the temples were closed, magistrates laid aside the badges of their office, and weddings, as we have seen, might not take place. We seem to hear an echo of the priestly functions performed on these occasions in the voice which weekly, in every Roman Catholic church, entreats the charity of common prayer for those "whose anniversaries occur about this time." Over and above the public rites there were many private services in memory of the departed, feasts like the so-called Rosalia, occurring in the spring or early summer, when flowers are most abundant, when friends were invited to partake of a simple banquet of bread and wine, eggs and vegetables, at the tomb of the deceased; when roses or violets were distributed to the guests, to be laid upon the grave, and offerings were made there of water, wine, warm milk, honey. or oil. There exists the fragment of a funeral stone, the inscription upon which provides that the sleeper shall be commemorated by sacrifices four times in each year, namely, "on the anniversary of his birthday, on rose day and on violet day, during the general Parentalia, and on the kalends, nones, and ides of every month."

Harriet Waters Preston.
Louise Dodge.