Post-war reconstruction (c. AD 61–70)

London was rebuilt after the Boudican revolt, chiefly in the period AD 62–4. Military engineers set a new fort over the ashes of the city destroyed by British rebels, rebuilt the harbour with massive new quays, introduced new hydraulic engineering to supply London’s bathhouses, and established new roads and causeways to speed the movement of people and goods. The presence of detachments of auxiliary soldiers used to garrison the city after the revolt is witnessed by exchanges recorded in wooden writing tablets, and by finds of military and cavalry equipment. High status cemeteries included the tomb of the procurator Julius Classicianus, an exceptional group of exotic cinerary urns including one carved from Egyptian porphyry, and the inhumation of a woman dressed in a way that might identify her as a member of the pre-Roman aristocracy. Irregular and fragmented burials are also described, and it is suggested that these may witness practices of corpse abuse and necrophobic ritual. The mutilated corpses of those denied normal burial may have been dispatched to the underworld by disposal in water, and disturbed corpses besides London Bridge may include the victims of Roman retributive violence following the Boudican revolt.

The Walbrook skulls

Many disturbed burials, including the river-rolled crania known to archaeology as the Walbrook skulls, are dated to the period following the rebuilding of London after the Hadrianic fire. This rebuilding involved the construction of a new road on the north side of the city which may have connected London with a ford over the river Fleet near King’s Cross. The road was built over partly articulated human body parts, and subsequently attracted a cemetery that included instances of execution and corpse abuse. Hundreds of reworked human crania have been found in waterlogged contexts where this road bridged the Walbrook and at other locations in the Hadrianic city. Various ideas accounting for this evidence are reviewed. Drawing on ancient sources and ethnographic parallels it is suggested that some of the remains were war dead and the victims of retributive violence, subjected to post-mortem corpse abuse, denial of burial leading to body fragmentation, and dedication to watery places on liminal locations in necrophobic ritual. The intensification of such practices in Hadrianic London may have been occasioned by a war that destroyed the city c. AD 125/126. Some of the partially articulated human remains might even mark the site of a battlefield or execution ground.

Death

Life and death is a vast subject, potentially taking in a massive chunk of the published output of Greco-Roman scholarship since the time of Homer and his contemporaries. So, some serious restriction of extent is required: this article will focus on life and death and how the two interrelate throughout the Greek and Roman periods. “Death” will cover eschatology, funeral and burial rites, funerary epigraphy, as well as different forms of death such as suicide, death in war and in the arena, death through disease, and murder. Poisonings, toxicology, osteoarchaeology, and forensics are also covered. “Life” will take in life where death impinges on it in whatever form. As with any culture and civilization, life and death were inextricably linked in ancient Greece and Rome: how one led one’s life was dictated to a large degree by belief in and expectations of a further life in the afterworld; similarly, the kind of afterlife one might expect was thought to be predicated on how one conducted oneself during life. The Greek tragedies underscore the absolute necessity for proper burial rites in Greek society while the Romans too had strict rules relating to funerary protocol and ritual. Epigraphy takes in military inscriptions and the formulaic praise, particularly of wives, husbands, children and mothers. We will see much on necromancy, communion with the dead, the underworld journey, underworld topography, and denizens of Hades and Tartarus such as Charon. The section on Postmortem Studies takes in works on memories of the departed, mourning, commemoration of the dead, the Parentalia, dining with the deceased, death pollution, corpse abuse, and cremations that went badly wrong. War death covers military and civilian death in battle and siege, disasters, and atrocities while suicide gives us Lucretia, euthanasia, and depictions of suicide in art. Finally, from murder, toxicology, and forensics we find studies on the effects of lead poisoning, the patricide of Verginia, three infamous women poisoners, and amateur toxicologists—Mithridates and Cleopatra. The citations range from Homer to late Roman, from the Greek polis to the Roman Empire at its widest extent and to its fall; they take in all available types of evidence as found in journal articles, books, visual arts, epigraphy, archaeology, architecture, science, and online sources.

Violent Rites Narrated

Narratives of ritual violence set in Israel’s past are the focus of Chapter 2. Among the texts the author analyzes are the Golden Calf story in Exod 32, the narrative of Gideon’s destruction of his father’s Baal altar in Judg 6, the account of David’s psychological abuse of his Moabite prisoners in 2 Sam 8, and Nebuchadnezzar’s capture and brutalization of King Zedekiah of Judah in 2 Kgs 25. These narratives illustrate well the physical and psychological nature of punitive ritual violence and its varied targets (altars, bones, corpses, the bodies of living persons, iconic representations of deities). Narratives of violent rites are particularly striking for their rich representation of corpse abuse and their many depictions of the manipulation of conventional mourning rites by hostile agents seeking to harm others through ritual means.