Niche,
showing the stucco figure of a veiled man, in the Tomb
of the Valerii
From 'The Shrine of St. Peter' by Toynbee and Perkins,
Pantheon. 1957 |
The
Tomb of the Valerii (Tomb H)
The
largest mausoleum of the whole series, H, with its
forecourt H1, is the family-tomb of the Valerii.
Writing-materials
are rendered in stucco above the heads of two of the
family-portraits in the Tomb of the Valerii. We cannot
tell whether this means that these people were professional
writers and men of letters, or that they merely devoted
their leisure-moments to literary pursuits.
|
From:
'The Shrine of St. Peter' by Toynbee and Perkins, Pantheon.
1957
Inscriptions throw some light upon the arrangements sometimes
made with regard to the ownership of tombs or of individual
burial-sites inside them. In the Tomb of the Valerii, Valerius
Philumenus and Valeria Galatia gave Titus Pompeius Successus
a locus in the tomb in which he might bury his son and their
friend, the free-born Titus Pompeius Successus junior.
Subsequent
restorations undertaken in the Tomb of the Valerii brought
further inscriptions to light. These inscriptions record,
among others, Aurelia Charite and her father Aurelius Psittacus;
Aurelius Helius and his wife Satria Ianuaria; and Flavius
Statilius Olympius, a Christian, whose delightfully illiterate
epitaph incorporates the Chi-Rho monogram. The inscription
recording Flavius Diodorus and his wife Selenia Berenice,
previously known only in a fragmentary state, is now complete;
the phrase comparaverunt libertis libertabusque posterisque
eorum, which it contains, may refer to the purchase either
of a whole tomb or of a burial-site within a tomb. A second
inscription of Flavius Diodorus and Selenia Berenice records
their infant grandson Flavius Velenius Diodorus, and alludes
to the purchase mentioned in the first inscription.
From:
'The Tomb of St Peter' by Margherita Guarducci, Hawthorn
Books, 1960
Corresponding to this variety of ideas about life beyond
the tomb there is a veriety of religious currents which
met and mingled at this time. This variety is well demonstrated
in the plaster ornaments in the tomb of the Valerii. There,
beside Minerva, the wise goddess of Olympus, can be seen
Isis, Apollo Harpocrates and Jupiter Dolichenus, three exotic
divinities very dear to the Romans of the imperial period;
while satyrs and maenads proclaim, with their frenzied dances,
the invincible power of that Dionysus-Bacchus whom the pagan
society of the time considered a symbol of supreme happiness
in earthly life and also in the future world. It might even
be said that the religion of Dionysus predominates in this
silent city of the dead. The young Dionysus, with his cortege
of satyrs and maenads, his panthers and his thrysus and
his festive, heavily-loaded bunches of grapes, seems to
promise, from the walls of tombs and from the carvings on
marble saracophagi, the end of troubles in an eternal happy
drunkenness.
Sources
P. Zander. The Vatican Necropolis, in "Roma
Sacra", 25, Roma 2003
Margherita Guarducci,
The Tomb of St Peter, Hawthorn Books, 1960
John Evangelist Walsh,
The Bones of St Peter, New York, 1982
J. Toynbee - J.W. Perkins. The Shrine of St Peter and
the Vatican Excavations, London 1956
Michele
Basso. Guide to the Vatican Necropolis, Fabbrica
di S. Pietro in Vaticano, 1986
