Wherein the family of dead Romans minded their own beeswax again and again.
Halloween 2020: A time for kids of all ages to put on masks, then put cloth masks over those, and finally refrain from trick-or-treating altogether to avoid people who aren’t wearing masks. It may not be “the most wonderful time of the year,” but it’s definitely the most appropriately 2020 time of this year.
All this naturally leads a middle-aged man’s fancy to thoughts of death masks. While it’s hard to beat the Egyptians for awesome masks (and I definitely intend to write about those someday), right now I’m thinking about the imagines maiorum of the ancient Romans. This is certainly the time of year to talk about an object made to honor a notable person or family member, but “probably in the end (looked) more like zombies than anything else.”
“Imagine All the People with Wax Faces…”
Okay, so John Lennon didn’t sing that, but you actually can imagine it if you see yourself walking into a Roman atrium and looking at the imagines, wax masks of deceased family members on display (you can get a sense of what it would be like in this mosaic from the Domus Augusti on the Palatine Hill in Rome). These masks were carried in funeral processions and put up in the home to remind everyone of the great accomplishments of the family, thereby reinforcing the family’s status in the community and inspiring descendants to live up to those standards.
The Greek historian Polybius (200–118 BCE) tells us how imagines were used in ancient Roman culture:
By these means the people are reminded of what has been done, and made to see it with their own eyes,—not only such as were engaged in the actual transactions but those also who were not;— and their sympathies are so deeply moved, that the loss appears not to be confined to the actual mourners, but to be a public one affecting the whole people. After the burial and all the usual ceremonies have been performed, they place the likeness of the deceased in the most conspicuous spot in his house, surmounted by a wooden canopy or shrine. This likeness consists of a mask made to represent the deceased with extraordinary fidelity both in shape and colour. These likenesses they display at public sacrifices adorned with much care. And when any illustrious member of the family dies, they carry these masks to the funeral, putting them on men whom they thought as like the originals as possible in height and other personal peculiarities. And these substitutes assume clothes according to the rank of the person represented: if he was a consul or praetor, a toga with purple stripes; if a censor, whole purple if he had also celebrated a triumph or performed any exploit of that kind, a toga embroidered with gold.
Interestingly, while we think of the imagines as “death masks,” in reality they were both made and displayed before the individual’s demise. Scholars point out that the masks were made when the person was roughly 35–40 and attaining such political offices as aedile (who maintained public buildings and regulated festivals), thereby signaling that he (because in Rome, unlike Egypt, they were mostly created for men) was rising to the same level of prominence as his ancestors. Furthermore, the masks were also displayed in the home shrine while the person lived, only being worn outside for funerals. This could potentially be even more inspiring (or traumatizing) than being compared to your siblings while growing up: “Why can’t you rise further along the cursus honorum like Grandpa Gaius? You’d better shape up, or we can melt down your stupid wax head as easily as we put it on that shelf!”
By the way, a doctoral student who needed to start over after making a mistake when creating a wax mask of her friend while learning the Roman process of imago-creation said, “I will tell you that I felt awful—simply awful—watching my friend’s face melting in the Crock-Pot.”
Dead-Man’s Bling
Given that the Romans were fond of creating marble statues to celebrate people and events, why would they create imagines from wax? The heat and smoke from candles burning around them would have caused them to degrade and melt (which I think would have made them look much cooler, although this probably would have inspired disgust or horror rather than the much-coveted respect and awe), and thus would necessitate regular re-creation and replacement (new copies were also created for children to keep in their own homes).
One possible reason for this is the malleable consistency and texture of wax makes it more lifelike, and therefore preferable for recreating a person’s face (particularly important when the object is being worn for a living representation of the person in a procession). Another possibility, according to Katie Jarriel (the face-melting student—now professor—quoted above), is that the Romans used expensive beeswax to demonstrate their affluence: “The ancient Romans placed particular value on different kinds of wax, so the wax used for the imagines may have expressed power, social distinction, or worldliness, among other things.”
Remember Your Loved One with a Creepy Mask
Masks have since been cast of many famous people—from Henry VII to Napoleon and Beethoven to, of all people, James Dean—to commemorate their lives. One mask, of an otherwise unknown 19th-century French girl now called L’inconnue de la Seine, has become so famous as both an art object and as the model for the first CPR mannequin that the figure is described as having “the most-kissed lips of anyone in history.”
I’ve notified my family that I want an imago made to commemorate me. Like the Romans, I want it made and displayed while I’m alive but, instead of showing my face in dignified repose, I want it to look like I’m being agonizingly smothered. Below the mask I want a plaque with a simple inscription: Et non poterat exspectare quam mortua essem (“You couldn’t even wait until I was dead”)!
