Human frailty and mortality influence the structure and functioning of all societies; therefore questions of how the ancients coped with their own mortality, how they sought to classify and control the causes of death, and how they treated the dying and the dead, are central to any understanding of antiquity. This volume draws upon recent research in archaeology, ancient history, and the history of medicine to evaluate all these issues. It addresses a range of topics including views of ancient disease causation; public and private health measures; how the natural and urban environment...

Presenting a range of translated texts on death, burial and commemoration in the Roman world, this book is organized thematically and supported by discussion of scholarship. It sheds light on the way death was thought about and dealt with in Roman society.

A catalogue and discussion of the social meaning and family relationships behind the funerary monuments of Roman France. Hope aims to reconstruct the stories associated with monuments from their inscriptions, artworks, dimensions, type and location. The catalogue entries, which include descriptions and inscriptions, are presceded by a discussion of the gender, age, social status and title of the dead, funerary monuments of soldiers and people of other occupations, such as gladiators, freedmen, family tombs and the Roman way of mourning and commemorating the dead.

This innovative volume draws on recent research in archaeology, ancient history and the history of medicine to discuss how people in the ancient world understood and dealt with illness and death in the urban environment.