‘Merrily reclining after his own demise': the banquet in Roman funerary art

The banquet is one of the most common themes in funerary art of the Roman period, found over much of the empire and in a wide range of media, from sculpture in the round and in relief to paintings and grave mosaics. Its treatment may include highly traditional elements, notably the so-called Totenmahl motif, but can also be extremely diverse, both in detail and in overall composition. A major distinction appears to separate images of the individual banqueter from scenes of the convivial banquet with numerous participants; yet the distinction is not absolute, and a good deal of mutual contamination and influence can be found between the two motifs. At the same time, the convivial banquet scenes frequently do not differ in any important respect from similar scenes in non-funerary contexts; and even in the more traditional 'Totenmahl' scenes new elements may appear that reflect contemporary dining practice, and that are also found in non-funerary contexts. Scholars have attempted to establish broad categories of significance, distinguishing for instance between scenes of funerary cult and those with a euergetistic reference, or between the hedonistic banquet, symbol of pleasure in life, and the eschatological banquet in the next world. Written evidence exists for all these possible interpretations, and occasionally internal evidence (such as an inscription) associates an image securely with one or another of them; but for the most part attempts to establish clear criteria for such distinctions have proved inadequate, and the subject retains its essential multivalence. My paper will give a rapid overview of this wide range of material, attempting to bring out the diversity of treatment which the subject of 'the banquet' could receive in Roman funerary contexts, and to establish the main recurring features. I will discuss some methodological approaches to questions of interpretation and significance, and the criteria that have been proposed. Although I do not believe that there can be any hard and fast system of interpreting these images, I will indicate a spectrum of ways in which evidence suggests that they might have been read by those who commissioned and viewed them.This conference paper is not available in ORA