From the years immediately following the Social War, the proliferation of grandiose tombs was a sign of the political and cultural unity of Roman Italy. The main roads into cities were in fact lined by a tightly-packed succession of funerary monuments.
The word itself, monumentum, was closely associated with the notion of preserving a memory. Monumental tombs in the Roman world were conceived as something which was both public and private. A tomb’s visibility (in proximity to a road or the city gates), its scale, the choice of an original or uncommon architectural form, the inscription, the decoration and the presence of the effigy of the owner and the family – all these factors ensured that the memory would endure.
For his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero chose a tomb which resembled a temple. The elegant monument at Ancona, adorned by the cithara player, must have alluded to a circular temple. Somewhat more grotesquely, Trimalchio gave dispositions that his sepulchre should feature the effigies of himself and his beloved wife Fortunata, with his adored dog at his feet!
Even for Augustus, the issue of the architectural design and scale of his funerary monument needed to be settled early on. By 27 BCE the great tumulus, with a diameter of around 90 meters, was already under construction. Intended to host the spoils of his entire family, it was widely imitated but never matched in either scale or splendour.