class="poem">Me viso rabidi subito cecidere furores;
Ridebat summus me veniente dolor.
Non licuit quenquam mordacibus urere curis,
Nec rerum incerta mobilitate trahi.
Vincebat cunctos præsentia nostra timores,
Et mecum felix quælibet hora fuit.
Fingebam vultus, habitus ac verba loquentum
Ut plures uno crederes ore loqui.
Ipse etiam, quem nostra oculis geminabat imago,
Horruit in vultu se magis esse meo.

i. e. the person imitated was startled to find the imitation look more like him than himself![65] One instance, however, of a different kind we may quote, which for its expressive simplicity might be placed on the monument of a Macready. INGENUUM COMŒDUM, PROPTER SINGULAREM ARTIS PRUDENTIAM ET MORUM PROBITATEM. The latter quality appears to have been rare among theatrical performers, and we can forgive the fierce zeal of the Christian Fathers against the stage, when we read on the tomb of a girl who was training for pantomime,—

Cujus in octava lascivia surgere messe
Cœperat, et dulces fingere nequitias.[66]

Before leaving what may be called the external peculiarities of Roman sepulcral inscriptions, we may notice the custom of placing on the tomb representations of the implements employed by the deceased in his occupation. The tomb of a baker, discovered a few years since near the Porta Maggiore at Rome, was constructed in the form of an oven, and sculptured on it were the loaves, the kneading trough, and the mill worked by an ass.[67] From the tomb of Cossutius, a carpenter, we learn the form of the square, plumb-line, compasses, callipers, and chisel, the last being exactly in the form of the celt, about which antiquaries have learnedly written. The ornatrix, or tirewoman, announces her vocation in life by a mirror, with a phial of perfume; the tabellarius, or postman, by a theca graphiaria, or pen-and-ink case; the mensor ædificiorum, by a decempeda, or ten-foot rule; the cultrarius, or cutler, by knives. The occurrence of these emblems on Christian tombs is said to have given rise to the reputation of unauthorized martyrdoms, the cutler being supposed to have been flayed alive, the wool-carder to have been torn to pieces with iron combs, the blacksmith to have been tortured with the forceps, the carpenter to have been sawn in two.[68] This custom continued in the middle ages. A tombstone in the museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society has a bell and a melting-pot engraved upon it, indicating that it covered the tomb of a bell-founder, and similar emblems have been found in Bakewell Church and elsewhere.[69] At the present day military and naval monuments alone display professional emblems.

It does not appear possible from the inscriptions on tomb-stones to deduce any inference respecting the average length of human life in the centuries which they embrace. They usually record with exactness the age of the deceased; often with the mention of the months, days, and hours; but they are only fragments of the record of mortality as it originally existed, and that record was itself very imperfect. Vast numbers were, of course, burnt or buried, to whom no monument was raised. There were pits without the Esquiline Gate, in which the common people were buried promiscuously. According to the statement of Ulpian, who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus, registers of population, age, sex, disease and death had been kept with exactness by the censors for ten centuries, and from observations grounded on these, according to Dr. Bissett Hawkins’s Medical Statistics,[70] from which I quote, the expectation or mean term of human life among the Romans was thirty years; while that of England, according to Mr. Finlaison, is fifty for the easy classes of society, and forty-five for the whole population. I do not put much faith in bills of mortality of the time of Servius Tullius, considering the rarity even of historical documents in the early ages of Rome. The monuments, too, are, in a large proportion of cases, to military men, who appear to have been cut off at very early ages. But many reasons may be given why the average of life should be shorter than in England. There was no provision for the poor among them, unless the irregular profusion of congiaria can be called so; there were no public hospitals; the city was in many parts unhealthy; their clothing not favourable to cleanliness, though remedied, in some measure, by the bath; and life was often shortened by suicide, which was regarded as venial if not meritorious. The average yielded by the inscriptions would certainly be low; I have noticed one death at 102 years,[71] 90 of which were passed without disease, and one at 100,[72] one at 92,[73] but these are rare. Valerius Julianus inscribes a monument to his son, who was three years old, and his mother (mammulæ), who was 80.

Dispara damna lege Parcarum et stamina dispara;
Hæc ridenda mihi est, hic lacrymandus erit.
Hæc namque emeritos bis quadraginta per annos
Vixit; at hic tertio Consule natus obit.
Cur modo tam præceps, iterum tam sera fuisti
Funeris amborum dic rea Persephone.
Vix lucem vidisse satis qui vivere posset;
Vivere quæ nollet vix potuisse mori.[74]

We now approach a more interesting inquiry. What light do the Roman sepulcral inscriptions throw upon the social relations, the domestic affections, the religious belief of the people from whom they originate? The voice of nature speaks more truly from the tomb than anywhere else; and if monumental phrases at last become formulary and unmeaning, in their origin at least they carry with them a deep significance, and express a genuine sentiment. We feel curious to know how a people so different from ourselves in manners and religion