ABSTRACT
John Bodel Death-pollution for the Romans was a mixed thing, part religious concern, part practical problem. That is a truism applicable, no doubt, to most cultures, but it will serve to mark the two ends of a spectrum that embraces much of Roman mortuary ritual. The challenge for the student of Roman customs is to recognise where along the scale between those two poles any particular behaviour is to be located. This chapter attempts to chart three distinct positions by focusing on Roman attitudes toward the professionals responsible for conducting funerals and performing public executions and on Roman practices in disposing of the bodies of the least fortunate. As an avowedly preliminary excursion, it makes no pretence to comprehensiveness and intentionally steers clear of some important areas traditionally covered in discussions of Roman death-ritual-the cult of ancestors and imagines, for example, or the sanctity of tombs (Flower 1996; De Visscher 1963; Ducos 1995)—which have tended to focus almost exclusively on upper-class behaviours, in the hope that an approach to the problem from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, may offer a fresh perspective.
