ABSTRACT
Philippe Ariès, in documenting the history of graveyard commemoration in Europe, noted the sharp difference between the ancient, classical approach to post-mortem memorials and the view of medieval European Christians. Whereas Roman notables had felt the need to cultivate their fame, and therefore often left behind elaborate tombstones and commemorative tablets, in the Middle Ages many graves bore no mark whatsoever. Ariès attributed this difference to altered senses of identity:
The common function of all the [Roman] epitaphs is identification. They give the name of the deceased, the date of his death, and his age (with increasing precision: he lived for so many years, so many months, and so many days)…Sometimes the tomb bears more than an epitaph: the family survivors may have added a portrait…designed to perpetuate the features of the deceased, just as the epitaph preserved his identity and, on occasion, his biography.1
