ABSTRACT
Death, as we have seen in Chapter 1, could occur at any point during the Roman life span with a concentration of deaths in childhood, early adulthood, in childbirth, and later, after about fifty years of age. This pattern and its associated greater frequency of death than that experienced in the West today would suggest that during the Roman life course an individual witnessed the loss of relatives at every stage. Famously, the grandsons of Augustus, Gaius and Lucius, died in early adulthood. Events Augustus recalled in the Res Gestae (14) on his death, recounting in the same passage the honours they had held and their achievements even though still young:
The emphasis, in this public text, was on the honours decreed to these two young men and the recognition of their value in life by the public bodies: the Senate and People of Rome and the equites. It is this which is highlighted here as a memorial to their brief lives. The role of the goddess Fortuna (Luck) illustrates a resignation to the deaths of the young, who had such great potential in their later lives in the eyes of their parents (compare Suet.Aug.65). Little appears here of the private grief Augustus experienced, instead we have a statement about the status of his adopted sons in the eyes of other Romans. This illustrates a facet of Roman commemoration – a life is seen from the point of view of the community or its public manifestation. In funerary inscriptions, the offices held by a man are recalled and his public prominence measured; or in the case of women their role as wives or mothers. This form of representation displayed the public values of Roman society, but need not
reveal the private emotions associated with the act of commemoration itself. Often, we find that the funeral and construction of a tomb make statements about the public view of the dead – maybe to increase the social value of the living through association with a memory of the deceased. Hence the commemoration of the dead and their memory through story telling or history added value to the status of the surviving relatives. This will be the focus of our opening discussion.
