Roman Funerary Processions and Burial Methods

A funeral joined family mourning to public remembrance

A Roman funeral was a rite of passage: it marked the deceased person's transition from the living community to the world of the dead. Proper treatment of the body mattered because Romans believed that the dead needed to reach the Underworld and that a neglected spirit could become troublesome. The funeral also helped the living honour someone they had lost and preserve that person's memory.

Following the period of mourning at home, the body was taken out in a funerary procession. This movement from the house to the burial place connected private family grief with a public ceremony. Its scale varied: an influential, wealthy person could receive an elaborate procession, whereas a poorer person's funeral might have only a few flute players.

Who took part in the procession?

Music and lamentation made the procession noticeable. Flute players accompanied it, and family members, slaves and freedmen could participate. Freedmen—people who had been freed from slavery—and clients could attend to show respect for their former master or patron. The procession therefore revealed the deceased person's relationships as well as the family's grief.

Wealthier families could hire professional mourners, especially women, who wailed and performed conspicuous gestures of sorrow, such as scratching their faces or pulling their hair. These were paid participants, not simply grieving relatives. Their presence both expressed mourning and demonstrated that the family could afford an impressive funeral.

Elaborate funerals could also include actors wearing imagines, wax portrait masks of the family's deceased ancestors. The performers represented those ancestors through their appearance and behaviour. Other performers could imitate the recently deceased person as they had been in life. In this way, the funeral presented the death as part of a continuing family history, rather than an isolated loss.

The body was carried on a bier, a portable, bed-like support. In an elaborate procession, performers representing ancestors could precede the body, with the family following behind. A eulogy, or commemorative speech, could praise the deceased person's life and achievements. Together, the masks and speech honoured the dead while also displaying the surviving family's ancestry and standing.

Cremation: burying the remains after burning

Romans used both cremation and inhumation. Cremation means burning the body; inhumation means burying the body without burning it. Cremation was common during the Republic and early Empire. From around the middle of the second century AD, inhumation increasingly became the preferred method. This was a change in custom over time, not a practice adopted by everyone at once.

For cremation, the body was placed on a funeral pyre, a structure of wood built for burning it, at a burial area outside the town. Once the remains had cooled, the ashes and surviving bone fragments were collected and placed in a funerary urn. The urn was then deposited in a tomb or another designated burial space.

One way to house many urns was a columbarium: a chamber with rows of small niches in its walls. Each niche provided space for cremated remains. Shared chambers allowed members of families, households or funerary associations to have a recognised resting place without each needing a separate large tomb.

Inhumation and the location of tombs

With inhumation, the body itself was buried rather than reduced to cremated remains. Wealthy families could place it in a sarcophagus, a stone coffin. Expensive examples were made of marble and carved with relief sculpture, in which figures project from the surface. Such decoration made the coffin a costly monument as well as a container for the body; it was not something every Roman could afford.

Most Romans were buried outside the town. Tombs often stood beside roads leading into it, where travellers could see them. Their position served remembrance: the dead remained visible to the living, and the family's name and status could continue to be recognised. Burial spaces ranged from impressive family monuments to shared accommodation for urns.

The family's duties continued after burial

A funeral could conclude with a ritual feast, bringing the living together and marking the completion of the funeral rites. Burial did not end the family's relationship with the deceased. Romans honoured the Manes, the spirits of the dead, and families left food and wine offerings at tombs.

The procession, burial place and later offerings thus served connected purposes: treating the dead properly, supporting the mourners and keeping the deceased person's memory alive. Wealth affected how grand these acts could be, but remembrance was important beyond the richest families.