Roman Funeral Funeral

1221 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Modern funerals an essay

Throughout history, different cultures have had different views about death and how they deal with this. As the world is changing constantly these ideas about stared to change as well as the methods used to treat the bodies and the deceased. The rituals and the treatment of the disposal of the body these varied according to social class status. The disposal of the body deepened on the class that you were in the society and how much you had. The poor people (slaves) had simple funerals, whereas the rich had quite large funerals. The poor people were usually cremated the day after their death because they couldn’t afford to do the funeral rituals grand like the rich.

When an emperor has passed away his body will be buried inside the city. …show more content…

Because Romans believed in the afterlife and that the journey to the afterlife began at the immediate moment of death, they had to give the corpses respect and admiration through each ritual to help their journey go smoothly. The Roman funeral was a ritual that signified the transition between life and death.

Funeral ceremonies usually took place at night, except for the last century of the Roman republic and the first two centuries of the Empire. There were 6 parts to the funeral preparing the funeral, procession, cremation/burial, eulogy, feast and commemoration. When someone has passed away the eyes of the dead/disease are closed. The body was washed with warm water and dressed in their finest clothes , anointed and the limbs were straightens and the hand were placed in a certain position. The body was dressed in a toga and placed on a funeral couch with their feet facing the door. Flowers were placed around the body. In the very early times and very late times, a coin was placed between the teeth of the dead could pay the ferryman, Charon, to row him/her to the land of the dead in their afterlife for the passage across the Styx. These were some of the rites of the home. The funeral procession takes place at the tomb, surround by family, friends and their loved

Show More
Related

  • Similarities Between Hebrew Bible And The Iliad

    2071 Words  | 5 Pages

    For this reason, the ancient Greeks believed that it was very important to give a deceased loved one of a proper burial. If a proper burial was not performed, the soul of the person would be doomed to walk the land of the living for eternity. An example of this is seen when Patroclus’ fellow warriors fought to retrieve his body for Achilles after he was killed by Zeus and Hector, because they knew that Achilles loved Patroclus like a brother. Atrides yelled, “Ajax! Hurry, my friend, this way--fight for dead Patroclus!

    Read More

  • A Study of a Dionysiac Sarcophagus

    1343 Words  | 3 Pages

    A man dies. He winds his way down into the underworld to reach the banks of the river Acheron where he meets the ferryman Charon. He takes a coin from his mouth to pay the toll across. On the opposite bank he is greeted by a Maenad or perhaps Bacchus himself who offers him a kylix of wine. Drinking deep, the man is transformed and resurrected from death to a higher plane. Instead of living a miserable dream in the underworld he receives redemption from his god Dionysos, the Savior. In Roman imperial times there was a great resurgence of the "Mystery" cults of Greece fueled by the hope of a life after death. In funerary monuments there can be seen the tenets of the religion as well as how it views the afterlife. Within the Los Angeles County Art Museum stands such a vessel created to facilitate this journey to eternal bliss.

    Read More

  • Medicine in The Elizabethan Era

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    May 2012 Web. 17 Jan 2014 McKenzie, Eleanor. “Funeral Rites & Customs in Elizabethan England” Classroom.synonym.com/ Demand Media Web 20 Jan 2014.

    Read More

  • A Body’s Dignity of a Maternal Brain Dead Mother

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    “In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...

    Read More

  • Pericles Funeral Oration Essay

    554 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first reason is that Athenian should be admired for their custom and tradition. According to Pericles speech, Athenians had great respect for their warrior class and they were proud of their city and its customs. They respected the warrior class and placed them among the top member of the society. In Athenians society, one of the important custom is their funeral. According to their customs, the funeral starts three days before the ceremony. In this ceremony, the bones of the death body were laid out in a tent and their friends brought offerings to their relatives of what they most wanted. Furthermore, in the funeral procession, cypress coffins were set up for the different types of tribe. The bones placed in the different coffin according to their tribe. One empty coffin was set up for those, whose body could not be recovered. In this procession, the female relatives came to wail at the burial. Any citizen or stranger who wants could join this procession. This types of the ceremony prepared at the people’s cost .This custom is coming from generation to generation and it will be continue in future.

    Read More

  • Improving End-of-Life Care in The United States

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    Deaths were a form of social event, when families and loved ones would gather around the bed of the dying, offering emotional support and comfort. Myth, religion, and tradition would combine to give the event deeper meaning and ease the transition for all involved. The one who was dying was confident in knowing what lay behind the veil of death, thanks to religious faith or tradition. His or her community held fast to the sense of community, drawing strength from social ties and beliefs. (“Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions" 1)

    Read More

  • Sarcaphagus (Greek) And Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagi

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    As all humans are well aware death is inevitable. Human cultures and death have always been closely knit together. Varying between location, time, and struggles you may notice societies adopt and update their cultures and as these cultures change it sometimes if reflected by how a civilization honors their dead. In fact, the way a civilization’s way of honoring their dead is very important to historians and archeologists as they help put together pieces regarding religion, the civilizations stance on mortality, art style and tell stories that can further clarify history. The topic of death is an extremely broad subject having many confusing and sometimes hard to notice difference that are hard to distinguish. An example of this might be Greek

    Read More

  • marriage and funeral in ancient greece

    2321 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marriage in Classical Athens was inevitable. It was a part of life. Everyone had to get married, just as everyone had to someday face death. Although most people would not see a connection between marriage and death, the Greeks did. Both define an irreversible physical change—the loss of virginity and the loss of life. This idea of loss, rebirth, and renewal are present in both wedding and funeral. This is evident in the way wedding and funeral ceremonies complement each other in character and content. Both ceremonies are interwoven with ritual meaning and overlapping rites.

    Read More

  • A Funeral Eulogy For A Roman Wife

    626 Words  | 2 Pages

    A pretty face gets old. A nice body will change. But a good woman with an amazing personality will always be a good woman. Life is about the good person you are. No one will remember you for what things you had, but how you made them feel. A man or husband usually expects a woman with amazing qualities and virtues. The role and duties of a woman and wife in the past and the present have changed significantly. People say that a real man respects and values the virtues of the woman he loves. In A Funeral Eulogy for a Roman Wife this is noticeable. The man wrote this eulogy hundreds of years ago about his wife and the admirable qualities, loyalty and self sacrificing love that she had. This eulogy, is a true summary of what it is like to be a Roman wife.

    Read More

  • Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain Analysis

    1066 Words  | 3 Pages

    She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more

    Read More

  • Essay On Igbo People

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    The funeral ceremonies and burials of the Igbo people are extremely complex, the most elaborate of all being the funeral of a chief. However, there are several kinds of deaths that are considered shameful, and in these circumstances no burial is provided at all. Women who die in labour, children who die before they have no teeth, those who commit suicide and those who die in the sacred month – for these people their funeral ceremony consists of being thrown into a bush.

    Read More

  • Hades

    1386 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... One tradition involving the underworld occurs above Hades. When a person dies, someone places a coin under the tongue of the victim. Charon, the ferryman, would not take any soul across the River Styx who did not have the coin. Those who didn’t would roam the banks of the river for eternity.

    Read More

  • Jewish Death Essay

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    Funerals are very important ceremonies in Hindu tradition. Hindus see cremation as an act of sacrifice to God and...

    Read More

  • Funeral Service History

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the present time, Ancient Egypt is one of the most notable early civilizations that took care in preserving the bodies of their dead (Wikipedia.com). However, preservation of the deceased’s body advanced during the Age of

    Read More

  • Funeral Cost Essay

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    Death is something that no one wants to go through or have to deal with, especially concerning the loss of loved ones. Unfortunately, it is not possible to go through life without experiencing this loss. Throughout the past several decades, the way that we view death and the funeral industry has changed significantly. Recently, it has seemed much more apparent that funeral industries are using death as a means of getting rich. But why?

    Read More

More about Roman Funeral Funeral

Open Document