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Refrigeria - Banquets for the dear ones

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The roman world of dead people and of their ghosts

Also in Rome. as in all antiquity, a special cult was bestowed to the tombs of relatives. It consisted in offerings of foods, wines and perfumes and it was firmly believed that those provisions would supply them with the never lasting banquets of the world to come. Some time the bereaved relatives poured their gifts directly in the grave. Thus, in the Neronian necropolis that has been found under the Vatican’s garage, we can see ceramic pipes stuck in the ground: Through them wine and victuals were directly emptied over the buried bones. In the necropolis of Ostia, or in the one of Carmona, a place near Seville, or again in Africa, at the one of Sidret el-Balik near Sabratha, beside veritable triclinia, we find also the kitchens where luxurious banquets, called “refrigeria”, were cooked: Refreshments offered to the dead people, but eaten by their living relatives.
These feasts, that were celebrated at given dates – nearly always at the death anniversary – were considered very important. Many Romans provided directly with their testaments to the expenses of the ones that had to be celebrated after their demise. That was usually done by the ones who didn’t have descendants or by the ones who had no faith in them. To do this they entrusted bound capitals to a trustee who each year employed its income to finance one or more of these banquets. The feasts were always organized near the tombs and all of the dead man’s friends took part to them. Everybody was sure that, also if invisible, the deceased enjoyed every moment of it. To sum it up it was a way to assure oneself of luxurious post mortem celebrations plus the remembrance and gratitude of the ones who came.
Apart of this all the dead people was commemorated during the “Parentalia” a solemnity that was held between February 13 and 22. In this occasion the family brought offers to their relatives’s tombs: it was a solemnity very similar to our 2 of November. It is plain to see that everything was made to keep dead people happy, satisfied and, above all, far, very far away from their living relatives and from their houses. However there were some fixed days in which for 24 hours the dead men could come back to the living world At Rome those dates - that we can indicate as “exit permits” - were August 24, October 5 and November 8. It was then that was disclosed the “Mundus”, one of the special accesses, orften wells created following very ancient customs and Etruscan rites, creaks open in the ground that, according to our ancestors, kept in touch the world of the dead persons with the one of the living beings. Some ones thought that at Rome the “Mundus” - which was covered by a stone slab called “Lapis Manalis” (Manes’s stone) - was at the Roman Forum and more exactly near the “Lapis niger” of the “Comitium”; others deemed instead that it was set on the “Germalus”, close Augustus’s residence However, except for these three days, the “Mundus” was always shut.
However, after that all had been said and done, ancient Romans were afraid of ghosts and dreaded this endless contact between the living world and the dead one. This fright was well revealed by the very ancient rite of the “Nocturna Lemuria” (the night ghosts) a ceremony that was held in May. It was then that the “pater familias” rose in the midst of the night and, barefoot, began to walk around the house snapping his fingers so that the ghosts, who had returned home, could hear his arrival and stand aside. Then, after having passed through all the rooms he reached the front door, where he found a bronze basin, and in it washed his hands, and turning his back to the open door and never looking to the rear, he took a fitful of black broad beans and threw them out saying “I am throwing at my back these black broad beans and with them I redeem me and my family”. Then again he touched the water and strongly stroke the bronze basin –the sound of bronze was a well known mean to chase dead men’s souls – and, for nine times, he ordered “Manes exite paterni” (Go out, ancestral spirits) and so made them leave the house.