In self-representational terms, funerals were expected to match the monument to which the eternal memory of a person was entrusted. The funus – the series of rituals which accompanied the passage from death to burial – was consequently a matter of public praise and glorification of the gens to which the deceased belonged.
This relief from a funerary monument in ancient Amiternum, near what is today L'Aquila, offers a remarkable figurative description of such an event. Leading the procession are the musicians (double flute players, horns, tuba players), followed by two praeficae, professional mourners paid to weep and offer a public display of grief. Lying on a kline, the body is carried on a litter by eight bearers. Behind it, it is possible to make out the drape of a canopy decorated to resemble a starry sky, with a crescent moon. The family and servants of the deceased bring up the rear of the procession, the women’s hair loose as a sign of mourning. The funeral of this unidentified member of the local élite, who lived into the final years of the Republic, must have been a re-evokation – at a local level – of the splendours of the ancient gentilicial traditions.