SPQR Blues 3 part LXXVI

[spqrblues]

I'll fix up the smudges when it isn't quite so 4 in the morning....






A Roman funeral procession for someone of moderate means would likely be headed by the undertaker, who would call out to people as the group wound its way through town to the road of tombs beyond the city; then would follow torchbearers, even during the day, and musicians, and symbols of the departed's rank or family. Professional mourners would lift up a loud and ostentatious wailing. After the pall bearers would follow friends of the family, then the family itself. Men of great rank of course had huge retinues, dozens or even hundreds of people wearing the masks of ancestors, and the procession would pause for orations in the deceased's honour. Children and the poor were often buried at night, and with little display. People often banded together in funeral societies to help one another afford a more respectable procession and feast.

Comments

Rumblings?

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, the Real mourners look a bit concerned about something other than the funeral. As in: What's that rumbling? I sense a nasty foreshadowing coming on.
DRW

Re: Rumblings?

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Smart-aleck answer: Felix should have eaten before the funeral.

Maybe the volcano won't 'splode at all!

But of course it will.

[kyleen66.livejournal.com]

Very very nicely drawn comic!

I like it.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

...Thanks... I'm never sure about how it looks at 4 in the morning....

[cyanocorax.livejournal.com]

Judging from the second panel, I think this one would look especially nice in full color. I didn't realize the Justa's hair was really that long. Must be obligatory for mourning women to look disheveled.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Justa does have either very long hair or a very good weave, but, my error, I've confused the characters with some unhelpful colour in a tiny drawing. It's meant to be the professionals in panel 2, not the family....

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, my own poor paragraph construction. I was talking about Justa in panel 4; I knew that the ones in 2 were pros (overacting just a little bit).

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes :)

Well, Justa has nothing better to do all day but sit around and grow her hair. Have it braided. Have it unbraided. Have it braided again.

[b2creative.livejournal.com]

I could SO make a living out of wailing and tearing my hair out ...

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

It keeps your hairdresser busy, but it's steady work, what with the state of ancient healthcare plans.

(Gee, do I have health insurance on the mind today for some reason...?)

[lovesfunnies.livejournal.com]

Not sure mourners would have gone out at night since Romans were a superstitious lot and afraid of ancestral shades. They would have hired professional female mourners to make a good show also. So sorry for the tooth troubles--I can really sympathize since I just had one pulled last week. Just in case you need it, cherry-vanilla babyfood tastes pretty good, so do milkshakes if you can stand the cold!! But don't try to eat cheetos (bad memories from having my wisdoms cut out in college).

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I'll doublecheck my sources on an old tradition of inhumation at night continuing in later times with children and the poor. When it came down to doing the scene I realised I knew a lot about tombs, urns, funerary art and inscriptions, and classical necromancy (for fun and profit), and about funerals for the wealthy and powerful, but not as much about the common folk.

I remember learning the Latin word for undertaker in junior high school (vespillo). One of the Latin teacher's favourite jokes was about an ancient pun on the word, but darned if I can remember what the joke was....

I can't even imagine trying to eat Cheetos after dental surgery. Yeow! This advice will be heeded.

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

Guacamole and refried beans are also good, if you start getting sick of having nothing but sweet stuff to eat. *nods* I hope you feel better soon!

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Yum, Tex-Mex as recuperation food. I like.

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

My people have a proud and practical heritage. :D

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Where the mourning ladies dressed in white because it was considered the colour of death, or are they just in their underwear?

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Women in white, men in dark tunics and togas. I've read that women who lost a child wore blue during their mourning, and a woman mourned with hair unbound and did not wear jewelry.

My modern-day family can be very formal about mourning, attire, and length of mourning, which has struck my modern friends as seriously peculiar. I suppose sometimes a mixing of cultures leads to an evaporation of cultural language and the reasons for, needs for, and benefits of ritual behaviour.

But the Romans, they were all about ritual.

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Yes, modernism and big-city culture mashups do that. My family lost all mourning rituals and traditions long ago. The dead are never put to rest. They stay around us a long, long time.

I was thinking of white as the colour of death because one of the few things we know about Rome's arch-enemies the punics, is that they dressed some of their elite troops in white because they identified that colour with death.

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't think I knew any of this stuff. Are the men wearing scarves on their heads? And what's the - is it a statue? - that the person is holding up in the third panel?

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

An icon of Isis. Not traditionally Roman... except that Isis had managed to get herself very deepy entrenched in Roman culture by this time.

The men lift the back drape of their togas over their heads. Here's a wall painting (http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/genius.jpg) showing it perhaps more clearly than I have. Your Toga May Vary according to the skill of your toga-draper and whether you're trying to hide a honking big dagger under it. That outfit is hard enough to draw when it's in the "normal" position....

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

>"That outfit is hard enough to draw when it's in the "normal" position...."<

I can only imagine! *shudder*

An excellent theory on the toga's design that I heard from a professor wth the nickname "Togaman" (I think he still teaches in...Atlanta?) who's done lots of research on it - is that if you make a sudden move with your [left] arm...As in say, trying to strike someone, the whole garment falls off, leaving you "naked" and dishonored - not a good situation in the middle of the Forum! Also, why they wore/carried the heavy wool on the left arm - To train thier arms to carry the heavy Scutum shield when not actually at war! As a sign of the Civilian-Soldier thing.

But the veil thing is very interesting...Men wore it in mourning or prayer ~ women wore it when out in public.

then the whole funerary and tombstone thing with Romans... Always makes me think (and giggle a little) of the Futurama episode where Bender becomes a Pharoah, and has a ginourmous statue erected.. "REMEMBER ME" *flames*...Bender would have made a fine Roman!

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Did the professor say whether the toga developed so elaborately for those reasons, or whether those were the reasons the Romans applied to it as explanation and justification and purpose for the toga after it had already become more cumbersome? "Wear your toga, Marcus; it's good for you and will keep you out of trouble."

I assume then that you at least carry a heavy wool coat over one arm at all times, yes? :D

My unstudied guess about the toga would have been: better to be wrapped in cloth than be nekkid, make it lots and lots of quality cloth to show how your household has the means and ability to weave that length of fine garment for you, and drape it over your left arm because most people need the right one for carrying things, gesturing, and scratching :) But I really ought to read some articles on what the Romans really thought about it (other than "wearing this thing is a big pain in my posterior") and what experts like Prof. Togaman have to say. Any chance you know/can track down the professor's real name? Hmm... maybe I should just do a little googling. Yay, more research!

I love Pharoah Bender. REMEMBER ME makes a nice counterpoint to that Venture Brothers quote IGNORE ME! I wonder if I can get both of those for ringtones on my Evil Cell Phone. I wonder if I can get it to shoot flames.

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

I'm paraphrasing what he's said a few years ago, and unfortunately I've lost the contact info.

I'm sure there is so much more to the toga than what I've mentioned briefly, I don't know a lot about it myself...I'm happy in my military tunic as it is.

Bu I would agree with you it would make sence the toga also doubled as a status symbol - "I can afford all of this expensive cloth - my family is well off - worship me"

I would gather, as many Roman things are, it evolved both for doing something and to justify it.

Although I don't carry heavy wool on my left arm at *all* times...I do try to carry stuff with my left when I think about doing it as "training"

I think a flame-shooting cellphone would be a little uncomfortable when it goes off in one's pocket or tucked in one's toga (or palla in your case? :D) although it'd be a great anti-theft device.

I need to watch more Venture Bros...And Robot Chicken... Le Sigh