, all in silk,
ungirdled and barefooted, and their hands washed, as we have said,
performed this office themselves. Then they put these relics in urns of
earthenware, or glass, or stone, or metal; they besprinkled them with
oil or other liquid extracts; they threw into the urn, sometimes, a
piece of coin, which sundry antiquaries have thought was the obolus of
Charon, forgetting that the body, being burned, no longer had a hand to
hold it out; and, finally, the urn was placed in a niche or on a bench
arranged in the interior of the tomb. On the ninth day, the family came
back to banquet near the defunct, and thrice bade him adieu: _Vale!
Vale! Vale!_ then adding, "May the earth rest lightly on thee!"

Hereupon, the next care was the monument. That of the duumvir Labeo,
which is very ugly, in _opus incertum_, covered with stucco and adorned
with bas-reliefs and portraits of doubtful taste, was built at the
expense of his freedman, Menomachus. The ceremony completed and vanity
satisfied, the dead was forgotten; there was no more thought, excepting
for the _ferales_ and _lemurales_, celebrations now retained by the
Catholics, who still make a trip to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead.
The Street of the Tombs, saddened for a moment, resumed its look of
unconcern and gaiety, and children once more played about among the
sepulchres.

There are monuments of all kinds in this suburban avenue of Pompeii.
Many of them are simple pillars in the form of Hermes-heads. There is
one in quite good preservation that was closed with a marble door; the
interior, pierced with one window, still had in a niche an alabaster
vase containing some bones. Another, upon a plat of ground donated by
the city, was erected by a priestess of Ceres to her husband, H. Alleius
Luceius Sibella, aedile, duumvir, and five years' prefect, and to her
son, a decurion of Pompeii, deceased at the age of seventeen. A decurion
at seventeen!--there was a youth who made his way rapidly. Cicero said
that it was easier to be a Senator at Rome than a decurion at Pompeii.
The tomb is handsome--very elegant, indeed--but it contained neither
urns, nor sarcophagi; it probably was not a place of burial, but a
simple cenotaph, an honorary monument.

The same may be said of the handsomest mausoleum on the street, that of
the augustal Calventius: a marble altar gracefully decorated with
arabesques and reliefs (OEdipus meditating, Theseus reposing, and a young
girl lighting