Ancient Roman Ghosts

*some* people get excited about the fall equinox because of pumpkin spice profusion. *I* get excited because I get to start celebrating Halloween with my thematic Instagram posts!

And today I am thinking about Ancient Roman ghosts, which is a complicated subject because Romans had a variety of overlapping ideas about existence beyond the grave. Ancestor worship/devotion, for instance, had various manifestations — households could have small statues of *Lares* that represented the dead relatives of a family. They also had “cubboard spirits”, the *Penates* which were guarded well because they were responsible for promoting prosperity. *Lemures* were spooky spirits (more on these in another post). And, testified ubiquitously on tombstones appearing after the Imperial era, were the “Di Manes”, the “divine departed”. Often the inscription just reads “DM”, and everyone would know what it meant.

Here you see such a tombstone, dated between 50-100 CE, which originally was meant to be placed horizontally. It is very unusual in its depiction of a relief of a cup as seen from a bird’s-eye view, with four holes. Presumably these holes would be there for the living to pour life-giving substances through — such as blood, water, wine, or milk — these liquids were imagined to drip through the ashes of the departed Livia Casta, feeding her spirit in some way.

It is difficult to get a handle on what the Romans actually thought about these *Di Manes*. Ample testimony from a wide variety of sources attests to a disbelief in the continuation of a personalized existence beyond the grave. Romans may have liked the idea of ghosts, but that doesn’t always transfer into a concrete belief in them. And it was possible that many Romans could imagine a spirit that was devoid of personality but still possessed a sort of ability to help or haunt the living.

P.s., the Di Manes were celebrated with their own festival called the Parentalia, which went on for nine days in February. The word “Manes” might be an archaic adjective for “good,” and doesn’t refer to the word “hand”, which in Latin is also “manes”. Also, St Augustine in the City of God (IX, ch 11), testified that the Di Manes were spirits of uncertain ethical alignment, whether good or bad.