Back in the day when Pompeii was thriving with life, many people died due to unfortunate deaths and the occasional town murders. The Romans believed a funeral was a rite of passage that symbolized the transitions between life and death. They always put a coin on the deceased tongue to pay the ferryman which took them to Hades. It’s very important to plan the proper burial to avoid vengeful spirits rising from the underworld. Roman funeral practices have been passed down and various Roman funeral practices still exist although, some of the practices have not been passed down.
Generally there were five parts of a Roman funeral: The first process of a Roman funeral is the procession. Following the procession, a cremation or a burial of the deceased person occurred. Thirdly, a eulogy was proceeded. The Romans next had a feast…show more content… The first step in the cremation or burial is the body is taken to the necropolis which is the city of the dead. In the necropolis the body was burned to ash. The ash and the remaining fragments of bone and teeth were put into a funerary urn for storage. Many Romans believed that until the body was taken, the spirt had not crossed the River Styx yet. The Styx river take the spirt from the living world to the world of dead. Through out the mid-2nd century cremation was the more common way to move the body. Eventually burial took over as the preferred method. The body is placed in side what we call a coffin but a sarcophagus was the common name then. The sarcophagus was massively decorated to commutate the lose of the deceased person. No possessions were buried with the body. In Roman Egypt there was a very life like paining of the deceased attached to the front of the sarcophagus. The Romans were very key to detail, the painting resemble the modern-day photographs. This level of technical ability in showing the human face in art was not meet till another 600 or 700