noy - 2000 - 'half-burnt on an emergency pyre' roman cremation

Greece & Rome, Vol. 47, No. 2, October 2000

'HALF-BURNT ON AN EMERGENCY PYRE': ROMAN CREMATIONS WHICH WENT WRONG

By DAVID NOY

In an ideal Roman cremation, the body was carried in procession from the house of the deceased to a place outside the city, where it was burnt on a pyre until it was reduced to bones and ashes (cineres' or favilla). The pyre should be built specifically for the deceased; having to use someone else's pyre was a sign of poverty, or an emergency procedure.2 The cremated remains might be buried where they had been burnt, usually in a ditch which was filled in and covered or marked; in this case the tomb was called a bustum.3 More usually, the cremation was carried out somewhere other than the final resting place, at a spot designated ustrina in Latin literature.4 This might be within the same tomb-precinct or columbarium, as in many tombs at Ostia,s or at a separate public site. The bones and ashes therefore had to be collected up and placed in a container, preferably a specially made and ornamented one (cinerarium, oss(u)arium, olla, urna), to be placed in the tomb. The force of the fire, the raking and collapse of the pyre during burning, and eventual quenching with cold liquid would together normally be sufficient to reduce the bones to small fragments which would fit easily into the container.6 This sort of burial of the remains is assumed in such wishes for the dead as:

I pray that you rest quiet and safe in the urn, bones, And that the earth is not burdensome to your ashes.7

Since the ideal was widely known during the period up to the second century C.E. when cremation was the normal rite for disposing of the dead in Rome, Italy and much of the Roman Empire, its details receive little attention in ancient literature. It was more likely to be commented on when something went wrong. Accounts of unsuccessful cremations provide a fairly consistent picture when compared to each other, although some of their details have not always been fully understood. They also illustrate how easily the process could fall short of the ideal.

A Roman cremation would hardly have been as speedy and efficient as its modern equivalent. Gas-fired crematorium chambers now take

ROMAN CREMATIONS WHICH WENT WRONG

one to two hours at an average temperature of 900 ?C to reduce a body to calcined bone which is then mechanically pulverized into 2-3 kg. of powder.8 An initial temperature of at least 500? is needed to get the body fats burning.9 These then provide some of the heat during the first part of the cremation, but towards the end of the process extra heat is needed as only the less combustible parts are left. 1 Most references to cremation in Roman literature give a misleading impression of speed. According to Varro, quoted by Servius (In Aen. 6.216), it was the normal practice for the crowd to remain around the pyre 'until the body was consumed and the ashes were collected, when the very last word ilicet was said, which signified that it was permitted to go (ire licet)'. Yet McKinley estimates that a cremation by standard Roman methods would take 7 to 8 hours.11 In an experimental burning of a complete skeleton (not a complete body) on a pyre measuring 1.8 x 2.0 x 1.3 m., the whole process from lighting the fire to picking out the bone fragments lasted at least 10 hours.12 Ethnographic evidence from nineteenth-century Tasmania indicates that pyres there were usually lit and then left overnight, but corpses seem often not to have been completely burnt by this process, so that they had to be re-fired the next day.13 This cannot have been Roman practice if Varro is correct about the ritual at the pyre. Arce suggests that proceedings for public funerals normally began at dawn,14 which would leave time for a cremation to be completed by nightfall, but most of a day (or most of a night) would be required.

For efficient burning, a pyre needs to be stoked and raked periodically to ensure a continued supply of fuel and oxygen and to prevent a build- up of ash. The building and tending of a pyre must have been a skilled task, which would take into account such factors as the wind direction.15 It is a process which largely goes unnoticed in Roman literature, although Vitruvius (2.9.15) observes that pyres were built with layers of logs, each layer laid over the previous one at right angles to it. This may also be implied by Seneca's description of Hercules' pyre as being built with 'alternating logs' (alternae trabes).16 There is probably implicit acknowledgment of the technique of pyre-building in the frequently recurring phrase 'a built pyre' (rogus structus), used particularly often by Ovid.17 There are several references in the context of funerals to an ustor, presumably a professional pyre-builder (the word derives from uro, to burn), but his exact duties are never explained.18

Professionally built pyres could still behave unpredictably, and might achieve notoriety if someone well known was being cremated. The Elder Pliny describes how the corpse of M. Lepidus was thrown off its pyre by

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the force of the flames, and could not be put back on because the heat was too great.19 When a friend of Tiberius Gracchus was allegedly poisoned, there was great difficulty in cremating the body: first it 'burst open and discharged such a mass of corrupt matter that the funeral pyre was completely extinguished'; then it would not burn until it was removed to another place, 'and it was only after a great deal of effort that the flames could be made to take hold.'20 The belief that the body of someone who had been poisoned could not be cremated properly is mentioned by Pliny, who says that one of the pieces of evidence used against Piso was that Germanicus's heart could not be burnt.21 Other- wise, the inability to burn a particular part of the body in normal circumstances was regarded as something miraculous: the right big toe of King Pyrrhus, whose touch effected miracle cures, was kept in a special shrine when it would not burn.22

McKinley writes: 'Cremation, as a process, needs heat, oxygen and time to complete; should any of these three be restricted, complete cremation may not be achieved'.23 The recurrence of the theme of the 'half-burnt corpse' in Roman literature can be understood better in the light of this information about the practicalities of cremation. While undertakers could in normal circumstances cremate bodies efficiently, people with no experience of pyre-building, acting in some sort of emergency, were liable to end up with an incomplete cremation.

Meteorological conditions were one potential problem, even at the best-organized funerals. This is graphically illustrated by Plutarch's account of Sulla's funeral:

The day was cloudy in the morning and, as they expected it would rain, they did not lay the corpse on the pyre until the ninth hour. Then a strong wind came and blew upon the pyre, raising a huge flame. They just had time to collect the bones, while the pyre was smouldering and the fire nearly out, when rain began to fall heavily and continued falling until night. It would seem, then, that his good fortune never left him and indeed actually took part in his funeral.24

The astrologer Ascletario, who was executed by Domitian, did not enjoy such good fortune. His body had only been half-burnt (semiustum) when a sudden storm extinguished the pyre and dogs tore the remains to pieces, fulfilling a prediction which Ascletario had made about his own ultimate fate.25

Lack of time was another possible reason for incomplete cremation. This was most likely to happen when the deceased was a fugitive and the body had to be burnt hastily before it fell into someone else's hands. In

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such circumstances the people in charge would usually be amateurs with no knowledge of pyre technology, and they were likely to be short of fuel as well as of time. Suetonius' account of what happened to Caligula provides one example of this. His body had to be disposed of rapidly before his murderers found it:

His corpse was taken secretly to the Lamian Gardens, half-burnt on an emergency pyre (tumultuario rogo semiambustum), and given a light covering of turf. Afterwards, when his sisters came back from exile, they exhumed the body and cremated and buried it.26

The half-burning may simply have been the best which could be done by whoever was trying to dispose of his remains. It is unclear who this was: the body was initially with his wife Caesonia on the Palatine, but after she was killed, his friend Herod Agrippa placed it on a bier.27 Barrett believes that Agrippa carried out the rest of the proceedings but Wiseman disagrees, and it may be that devoted ex-slaves took charge, as they did with Nero and Domitian.28 One consequence of the half- burning would have been to make the body unrecognizable,29 which may have been deliberate if it was feared that Caligula's enemies were likely to mutilate it (a possibility which is discussed further below). In a modern cremation, most soft tissue is removed in the first 45 minutes of the process,30 so making a body unrecognizable would be much quicker than cremating it fully. The intention may have been to give it the proper rites later, which was what happened when Caligula's sisters returned from exile. The temporary burial of the half-burnt remains directly in the ground was the only option in the interim, since they would not have been reduced sufficiently to fit into a cinerarium, even if one was available.

The fate of Caligula's remains helps to explain two apparently contradictory accounts of what happened to Varus' body after his defeat in Germany in 9 C.E. According to Velleius (2.119.5): The enemy's ferocity had mutilated Varus' half-burnt body (corpus semiustum). His head was cut off and taken to Maroboduus and sent by him to Augustus. However, it was honoured with burial in the family tomb.

However, Florus (2.30.38) says that, in order to be mutilated by the Germans:

The body of the consul himself, which the soldiers' piety had hidden in the ground, was dug up.

The two passages can be reconciled: the half-burning was done by the soldiers, who did not have time to complete the cremation. They buried

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the remains, which were then dug up and mutilated by the Germans. For Varus, unlike Caligula, an incomplete cremation was not enough to save his body from further harm.

Another description of a similar event goes into rather more detail: Lucan's account of what happens to Pompey's body after his murder on the coast of Egypt. The freedman Philippus and the 'quaestor' Cordus take it on themselves to cremate the body, using the remains of an abandoned fishing boat for a pyre and getting a light from another pyre already burning nearby. Lucan mentions one realistic if macabre detail: how the fat sputters from Pompey's body as it burns (8.777-8). The fire is kept going all night, but eventually Cordus loses his nerve. To save time, he takes the bones from the pyre while they are still half-burnt (semusta) and 'full of unburnt marrow', douses them in the sea and puts them in a shallow grave (8.785-8). He places a stone on top to prevent the remains from blowing away, and writes Pompey's name on a piece of wood. Lucan then laments at great length how unfitting the grave is for such a great man. In Pompey's case, the cremation was too late to save the body from mutilation, since it had already been decapitated; the head was eventually taken to Caesar, who gave it a separate cremation.31 The detail about the remains of the fishing boat is also in several other writers, and may derive ultimately from Livy.32 Plutarch has the rites carried out by Philippus and an old man who once served under Pompey. Otherwise Lucan's account probably came mainly from his own imagination, but it shows an awareness of the mechanics of cremation which is found nowhere else in Roman literature; he clearly knew, for example, that burning a body all night on an inadequate pyre would not achieve a full cremation.

Lucan (8.764-7) makes the desire to avoid the corpse being further defiled, by animals or enemies, into the reason for Philippus and Cordus being so determined to cremate Pompey's body. Bodies which had been properly reduced to cineres were safe from further damage,33 but the fear of a body being mutilated is a common literary theme.34 Sulla's body was cremated, although his family traditionally practised inhumation, specifically to avoid any dishonour being done to it, as had been done, for example, to the corpses of both the Elder and Younger Marius.35 After Commodus' assassination, the senate and people wanted to mutilate his body, but as it had already been disposed of (presumably by cremation), they were unable to do so.36 Displaying the severed head of an enemy became a standard symbol of victorious ruthlessness.37 Galba's decapitated body was cremated and buried by his dispensator,

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and the head was only reunited with it later.38 Nero was anxious for his whole body to be cremated so that his head would not fall into the hands of anyone else.39

A half-burnt body therefore achieved none of the practical purposes of cremation: it was still vulnerable to further mutilation, while present- ing a gruesome sight to anyone who had to dispose of it. The term sem(i)ustus when applied to human remains was always intended to evoke horror or pity. Revulsion at the appearance of a half-burnt body is suggested by a mock-epitaph for a slave which is full of insults to the deceased: it describes him as half-burnt ( t7LrVpCoro?) and 'still full of green rot'.40 Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. 3.13.5) has a half-burnt body as the foulest comparison he can think of in his description of a parasite:

In fact, he is fouler and uglier than a corpse on a pyre which, when the torches have been applied and it is half-burnt (semicombustum), rolls down as the pile of faggots collapses, so that the undertaker (pollinctor) shudders to put it back on the pyre.

Since people of Sidonius' time and background practised inhumation not cremation, the image is almost certainly derived from much earlier literature, perhaps Pliny's account of the cremation of Lepidus.

It is clear that an incomplete cremation was also sometimes felt to be an insult to the deceased.41 Cicero twice uses the term sem(i)ustilatus, another variation of sem(i)ustus, both times in order to attack his opponents. He says that Clodius's bloody corpse was left 'half-burnt on the most ill-omened wood, to be torn to pieces by nocturnal dogs', and that Caesar's body was half-burnt with the same torches which were used to burn down the house of L. Bellienus.42 The allegation is manifestly false in both cases: although the funerals had irregular elements, as noted by Plutarch (Brut. 20), there is no reason to think that either left the body half-burnt, and Cicero himself gives no indication elsewhere that this was the case. Lacey, commenting on the Philippics passage, says that the charge is 'untrue unless it had a technical meaning of "not ceremonially cremated"',43 but the usage of terms for half-burnt elsewhere suggests that they should be taken literally. While Cicero was no doubt happy to make claims which reflected badly on the memory of Clodius and Caesar, his immediate aim in both passages was to attack the people who took charge of the funerals, Sex. Clodius and Antony respectively. He uses the image of the half-burnt body to show their failure to do their duty to the deceased.

If half-burning insulted the deceased, then a deliberate half-burning was a deliberate insult. There are two possible but ambiguous references

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to this. One of the many curses in Ovid's Ibis (633-4) involves wishing that the victim should take 'half-burnt limbs' (membra semicremata) to the Underworld like Alcibiades, but the reference could be to the manner of death rather than to any lack of a proper cremation.44 Philo describes the victims of the pogrom in Alexandria as dying half- burnt (ltu('AEKros), more through smoke-inhalation than actual burn-

ing;45 it is possible that this reflects a deliberate exacerbation of the death in the eyes of the Greeks carrying out the massacre. There is a much clearer case of intentional insult with the popular suggestion (ultimately unrealized) about what should be done with Tiberius after his death:

The body began to be moved from Misenum, with many people proclaiming that it would be better to take it to Atella and half-burn it (semiustilandum) in the amphi- theatre.46

Lindsay's comments on this passage rather miss the point:

This relates to his perceived tyrannical status. It was notorious that a tyrant's body could not be totally consumed by the flames ... This is presumably because he was considered polluted.47

He compares Cicero on Caesar's funeral and Plutarch on Sulla's, but neither of those cases provide parallels to premeditated half-burning. In fact, half-burning in Roman literature is never associated with the impossibility of a complete burning, only with the difficulties of completing the cremation or, as in this case, the desire that it should deliberately be left incomplete. The suggestion was intended as a way of dishonouring the dead Tiberius.

Allara sees cremation as the definitive moment at which the deceased was separated from the living.48 If this is correct, then a half-burning which left remains still recognizably human would not achieve a proper separation. The remains could not be placed in a cinerarium in a tomb, because they had not been reduced to a small enough size, and the best that could be done was to place them in a shallow grave, where they were vulnerable to disturbance. Hence the occasional association of half- burning with souls failing to make a complete transition from one world to another. According to Suetonius, Caligula's ghost haunted the Lamian Gardens until his sisters completed the rites for him. Prieur uses this as the basis for a general statement about the lack of purification which resulted from an incomplete cremation,49 but other literary evidence does not support the view of cremation as an essential rite of purification. The idea that some sort of funeral rite was necessary

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for the soul to pass into the Underworld seems to have been fairly common,50 but a normal cremation still required an act of symbolic inhumation before it was considered to be fully effective in this respect.51 Lucan takes a different view from the Suetonius passage, since Pom- pey's soul is described as arriving in heaven immediately after his incomplete cremation, 'leaving his half-burnt limbs'.52 Similarly, Silius Italicus' description of the sack of Saguntum has a scene where a woman named Tiburna lights her husband Murrus's funeral pyre and kills herself on it; a mass of bodies are then half-burnt, but the souls are still described as being taken down to Tartarus (2.681-2, 695).

Nevertheless, the people who saw Caligula's ghost no doubt came from a very different background from Lucan and Silius, and beliefs may well have varied. A body which had not been disposed of by normal methods would naturally worry the superstitious. If the soul of the half- burnt deceased had an ambiguous status in the minds of some, it would not be surprising if the physical remains were felt to have magical properties. This would explain why, among the human remains, lead tablets and other magical apparatus for consigning souls to the Under- world allegedly found in Germanicus' bedroom, were 'half-burnt remains (semusti cineres) smeared with gore'.53 Cineres here should again be understood as what was left after cremation, i.e. not just ashes but also burnt bones, which explains how they could be 'smeared' with something.54 If they were half-burnt, they would be larger than the fragments normally placed in a tomb. Lucan's grotesque witch Erictho also made use of 'smoking ash and burning bones' which she grabbed from funeral pyres before the flesh was fully burnt off.55 The idea that witches looked for relics of bodies in the remains of funeral pyres is mentioned by Apuleius too.56 Belief in the magical potential of half- burnt remains may well have been widespread.

The half-burnt body is a common motif in Roman literature of various sorts, appealing particularly to lovers of the grotesque, but it was based firmly on real life and on the practical difficulties of cremation in less than ideal conditions. The historical examples are drawn from the elite, but in imaginative literature the issue is made relevant to a much wider section of society. Apart from the ambiguity over the fate of the soul, the authors' attitude to the consequences of incomplete cremation is fairly consistent, if seen in the context of what was expected of a 'normal' cremation. A half-burnt body offended the living and insulted the dead. It was unpleasant and potentially dangerous because it could not be seen as having been finally laid to rest. People were willing to try

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to carry out cremations in unfavourable circumstances, but if they did not succeed in completing the process, they risked leaving half-burnt remains which fell outside all the normal categories of Roman disposal of the dead, and which reflected badly on all those concerned.

NOTES

I am grateful to an anonymous referee for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to members of the Ostia Mailing List, especially Michael Heinzelmann, for bibliographical advice.

1. The phrase ossa et cineres ('bones and ashes') is used fairly frequently for what is left after a cremation, but when cineres is used alone in this context it should be understood to include bones as well as ashes (OLD: 'Ashes as the condition of the body after death'); the usual translation of 'ashes' can sometimes be misleading. In epitaphs, ossa hic sita sunt ('the bones are buried here') is used frequently, but there is no equivalent for cineres apart from the occasional use of cineribus (dative) at the beginning of the inscription.

2. Lucretius 6.1282-6; Martial 8.75; Lucan 5.281-2, 7.803-4. 3. Servius, In Aen. 11.201 (at 11.185 he applies it to the extinguished pyre); Festus 29L

(quoting Aelius Gallus). In practice, the word often seems to signify simply 'pyre' or 'tomb'. This type of tomb is found, for example, at Ostia: M. Floriani Squarciapino, Scavi di Ostia III. Le necropoli. Parte I. Le tombe de eta repubblicana e augustea (Rome, 1956), 12, 14, 18, 110, 112, 234. There are also examples at Belo (Bolonia) in Spain, where it represented a continuation of pre- Roman customs: P. Paris and G. Bonsor, Fouilles de Belo (Bolonia, Province de Cadix) 1917-1921. Tome II. Le necropole (Paris, 1926), 28, 34, 43, 69.

4. e.g. Apuleius, Met. 7.19; Porphyry, In Hor. Serm. 1.8.11-12, 14; Servius, In Aen. 3.22, 6.216. The form ustrinum is also found (Servius, In Aen. 11.201), but is rarer, despite being the term usually employed in modern literature.

5. Floriani Squarciapino (n. 3): via Ostiense tombs 5, 20, 22(?); via Laurentina, tombs 9, 32, 34, 43, 49. Many tombs at Belo also had their own ustrinum: Paris and Bonsor (n. 3), 44-66.

6. J. I. McKinley, 'Bone fragment size in British cremation burials and its implication for pyre technology and ritual', Journal of Archaeological Science 21 (1994), 339-42, at 339-40. Lactantius, De Mort. Pers. 21.11, refers to the grinding-up of bones of Christians who had been cremated during executions under Galerius; this indicates that pulverization after cremation was not normal practice.

7. Ovid, Am. 3.9.67-8. 8. J. Musgrave, 'Dust and damn'd oblivion: a study of cremation in Ancient Greece', ABSA 85

(1990), 271-99, at 272; J. I. McKinley, 'Cremations: expectations, methodologies and realities', in C. A. Roberts, F. Lee & J. Birtliff (eds.), Burial Archaeology. Current Research, Methods and Development (BAR British Series 211, 1989), 65-76, at 65. Roman pyres could reach 900?, as demonstrated by C. Wells, 'A study of cremation', Antiquity 36 (1960), 29-37, at 36.

9. McKinley (n. 8), 65. 10. C. J. Polson & R. P. Brittain, Disposal of the Dead (3rd ed., London, 1975), 176. 11. McKinley (n. 8), 67. 12. J. Piontek, 'The process of cremation and its influence on the morphology of bones in the

light of results of experimental research' (English summary), Archeologia Polski 21 (1976), 277-80, at 278.

13. B. Hiatt, 'Cremation in Aboriginal Australia', Mankind 7 (1969), 104-19, at 104. 14. J. Arce, Funus imperatorum: los funerales de los emperadores romanos (Madrid, 1988), 22, cf.

31. Clodius' funeral, which was not an officially 'public' one, began at dawn according to Asconius, Mil. p. 28.

15. Piontek (n. 12), 279. 16. Seneca, Herc. Oet. 1637. 17. Ovid, Tr. 1.3.98, 3.13.21, 4.10.86; Ex.P. 3.2.32.

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18. Catullus 59.5; Cicero, Pro Milone 33.90; Lucan 8.738; Martial 3.93.26. No doubt the ustor could sometimes be the same person as the pollinctor who was responsible for other aspects of the ritual.

19. Pliny, H.N. 7.186. 20. Plutarch, Ti.G. 13 (tr. I. Scott-Kilvert). 21. Pliny, H.N. 11.187; Suetonius, Cal. 1. 22. Pliny, H.N. 7.20. 23. McKinley (n. 8), 72. 24. Plutarch, Sulla 38 (tr. R. Warner, adapted). Some of the same details are also given by

Granius Licinianus 36.29. Whatever the time of year (the exact date of Sulla's death does not seem to be recorded), it is unlikely that a cremation started at the ninth hour, i.e. mid-afternoon, could have been completed before nightfall, although the extra heat from the 'huge flame' may have speeded up the process, as suggested by Arce (n. 14), 22. He also argues (p. 31) that this may be intended to suggest divine intervention.

25. Suetonius, Dom. 15. 26. Suetonius, Cal. 59. 27. Josephus, Ant. 19.195, 237. 28. A. A. Barrett, Caligula. The Corruption of Power (London, 1989), 167; T. P. Wiseman, Death

of an Emperor (Exeter, 1991), 94. D. Hurley, An Historical and Historiographical Commentary on Suetonius' Life of C. Caligula (Atlanta, 1993), 213, suggests that 'It should be imagined that Claudius approved minimal decency', but it seems more likely that the rites were carried out before Claudius was in a position to influence them.

29. I owe this point to Christine Aylott. 30. McKinley (n. 8), 65. 31. Plutarch, Pom. 80; Appian, B.C. 2.86; Lucan 8.668-87; Valerius Maximus 5.1.10. 32. Plutarch, Pom. 80; Manilius 4.54-5; Valerius Maximus 1.8.9; J. B. Postgate (ed.), M. Annaei

Lucani De Bello Civili Liber VIII (Cambridge, 1917), lxi. 33. D. G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London, 1998), 168-9. 34. See, e.g., Seneca, Ep. 92.5; Valerius Maximus 1.6.11 (on Crassus and the dead of Carrhae).

The issue is discussed by V. Hope, 'Contempt and respect: the treatment of the corpse in Ancient Rome' (forthcoming).

35. Cicero, Leg. 2.56-7; Granius Licinianus 36.25; Pliny, H.N. 7.187. 36. Dio, Ep. 74.2; cf. SHA, Comm. 20.1. 37. e.g., according to Dio, Ep. 76.7.3, Severus ordered Albinus's head to be sent to Rome from

Lyon, and the rest of the body to be thrown away (pAt/vat) (cf. SHA, Sev. 11.6-7). In contrast, Marcus Aurelius had Avidius Cassius's severed head buried (Dio, Ep. 72.28.1), an act clearly intended to symbolize his clemency.

38. Tacitus, Hist. 1.49. 39. Suetonius, Nero 49. 40. Anth. Pal. 7.401. 41. Postgate (n. 32), 123. 42. Cicero, Pro Milone 33, Phil. 2.91. 43. W. K. Lacey (ed.), Cicero: 2nd Philippic Oration (Warminster, 1986), 224. 44. Seneca (Thy. 79-80) makes the ghost of Thyestes address various groups of sinners who are

being punished in the Underworld. The last such group is 'whoever, half-burnt, drive away the brandished torches [of the Furies]'. Does half-burnt refer to the punishment they are receiving or to their state on entering the Underworld? R. J. Tarrant, Seneca's Thyestes (Atlanta, 1985), 100, suggests that Seneca was influenced by the Ibis passage, although he attributes the half-burning to the Furies' torches.

45. Philo, Flacc. 69, Leg. 130. 46. Suetonius, Tib. 75. 47. H. Lindsay (ed.), Suetonius: Tiberius (London, 1995), 187. 48. A. Allara, 'Corpus et cadaver, la "gestion" d'un nouveau corps', in F. Hinard (ed.), La mort au

quotidien dans le monde romain (Paris, 1995), 69-79, at 70. 49. J. Prieur, La morte nell'antica Roma (Genoa, 1991) [Italian tr. of La mort dans l'antiquite

romaine], 13. 50. e.g. Pliny, Ep. 7.27.

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51. 0. Estiez, 'La translatio cadaveris. Le transport des corps dans l'antiquite romaine', in Hinard (n. 48), 101-8, at 104.

52. Lucan 9.3. Elsewhere (7.804-24), Lucan, in his authorial voice, says that it does not make any difference whether or not the dead of Pharsalus are cremated.

53. Tacitus, Ann. 2.69. 54. F. R. D. Goodyear, The Annals of Tacitus, Books 1-6, Vol. 2: Annals 1.55-81 and Annals 2

(Cambridge, 1981), ad loc., says that it is unclear how these remains differed from the other things used: either resulting from cremation if the others did not, or not being recognizably human. However, the point about half-burnt remains is that they were recognizably human, unlike what would be left from a complete cremation.

55. Lucan 6.532-6. 56. Apuleius, Met. 2.20.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

DAVID RAEBURN: formerly Grammatikos and Grocyn Lecturer; currently college lecturer, Balliol and New Colleges, University of Oxford.

VINCENT J. ROSIVACH: Professor and Director of Classical Studies, Fairfield University, Connecticut.

RACHEL HALL STERNBERG: Assistant Professor of Classical Studies, The College of Wooster, Ohio.

DAVID NOY: Lecturer in Classics, University of Wales Lampeter. NEVITTIIE MORLEY: Lecturer in Ancient History, University of

Bristol. IAN MACGREGOR MORRIS: Research Student in History, Uni-

versity of Manchester.

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noy - 2000 - 'half-burnt on an emergency pyre' roman cremation

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