Associations in Ancient Rome - Burial Associations

Burial Associations

Securing a proper burial was one motive for a working class person to belong to a trade guild. In the year 133 under Hadrian, the formation of collegia specifically for this purpose this instinct was recognized by law, preserved at the head of the regulations of a collegium instituted for the worship of Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium. According to the Digest (47. 22), this was a general law allowing the founding of funerary associations, as long as the law against illicit collegia was complied with. The inscription of Lanuvium, together with many others, indicates that heir members were as a rule of the humblest classes of society, and often included slaves. Each member paid an entrance fee and a monthly subscription, and a funeral grant was made to his heir upon death in order to bury him in the burying-place of the college, or if they were too poor to construct one of their own, to secure burial in a public columbarium.

These colleges were organized along the same lines as the municipal towns of the empire. Their officers were elected, usually for a year, or in the case of honorary distinctions, for life. As in a municipal town, they held titles such as quinquennales, curatores, and praefecti. Quaestors superintended the finances of the association. Their place of meeting, if they were rich enough to have one, was called schola and was like a clubhouse. The site or the building was often given them by some rich patron, who was pleased to see his name engraved over its doorway.

The patroni increased in number, and more and more the colleges acquired the habit of depending on their benefactions. The inscriptions provide no evidence of whether the collegia also provided assistance to sick or infirm members. The only exceptions seem to be the military collegia, which, though strictly forbidden as dangerous to discipline, continued to increase in number in spite of the law. Inscriptions from the great legionary camps of the Roman province of Africa show not only the existence of these clubs, but the way in which their funds were spent. It appears that they were applied to useful purposes in the life of a member as well as for his burial, e.g. to traveling expenses, or to his support after his discharge.