During the Roman Empire lavish marble monuments to the dead were erected to decorate tombs and cemeteries. A group of these memorials, often so opulent that they required considerable economic sacrifice from the families who commissioned them, is catalogued in this volume.

Situates the study of Roman sculpture within the fields of art history, classical archaeology, and Roman studies, presenting technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical approaches.

Explores four key questions around Roman funerary customs that change our view of the society and its values.

"Davies sets out to ask, How did the Romans bury Caesar? And with what monuments did they sing his praises? . . . The architectural elaboration of these structures, their siting in the capital, the lines of vision and approaches that exposed them to view, the paths their complex outworks formed for visitors to walk, are all picked out with skill and presented with care in Death and the Emperor." ?Times Literary Supplement "This concise and lucidly written book is a very valuable new contribution to the studies of Roman imperial cult, political propaganda, and topography, and has the added benefit of discussing complex scholarly disputes in a manner that the non-specialist will probably follow with ease. . . . There is material in this volume that will be immensely useful to researchers in many areas: archaeology, history of architecture, iconography, history of religion, and Roman political propaganda, to name just a few. I strongly recommend it to scholars interested in any or all of the above topics." ?Bryn Mawr Classical Review "Even though its focus is on only seven specimens of architecture, the book touches upon a broad array of aspects of Roman imperial culture. Elegantly written and generously illustrated . . . this book should be of great interest to the general public as well as to the scholarly community." ?American Journal of Archaeology

Cripina and Her Sisters explores visual imagery found on burial artifacts of prominent early Christian women. It carefully situates the tomb art within the cultural context of customary Roman commemorations of the dead and provides an in-depth review of women‘s history in the first four centuries of Christianity. From this, a fascinating picture emerges of women‘s authority in the early church--a picture either not readily available or recognized, or even sadly distorted in the written history.

This important new study looks at coffins, masks, shrouds, and tombs from the Roman Period in Egypt, when naturalistic Greek art forms, like portraits, were combined with traditional Egyptian art. The book presents more than 150 objects and tombs, many for the first time, and reveals how they created a 'beautiful burial' to glorify the dead in the changing cultural landscape of Roman Egypt.

The most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices—now available in paperback Never before available in paperback, J. M. C. Toynbee's study is the most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices. Ranging throughout the Roman world from Rome to Pompeii, Britain to Jerusalem—Toynbee's book examines funeral practices from a wide variety of perspectives. First, Toynbee examines Roman beliefs about death and the afterlife, revealing that few Romans believed in the Elysian Fields of poetic invention. She then describes the rituals associated with burial and mourning: commemorative meals at the gravesite were common, with some tombs having built-in kitchens and rooms where family could stay overnight. Toynbee also includes descriptions of the layout and finances of cemeteries, the tomb types of both the rich and poor, and the types of grave markers and monuments as well as tomb furnishings.