Note 1373 — MENSIS FEBRUARIUS

This was the universal practice in Italy from the earliest times, so far as we have as yet learnt from excavations. For the question whether burial in or close to the house, or within the city walls, preceded burial in necropoleis, see Classical Review, for February, 1897, p. 32 foll. Servius (Ad Aen. 5. 64; 6. 152; cp. Isidorus, 15. ii. 1) tells us that they once buried in the house, and there were facts that might suggest this in the cult of the Lares, and in the private ghost-driving of the Lemuria; but we cannot prove it, and it is not true of the Romans at any period. Not even the well-known law of the XII Tables can prove that burial ever regularly took place within the existing walls of a city.