We see dead people. And if ever we might forget this, these two collections will remind us. Both based on conferences, they offer a range of interdisciplinary approaches to death and commemoration in the Roman world. The interaction between literary, visual and archaeological evidence in the volumes, and in individual papers, gives a novice a crash course in varying methodologies. The tension between approaches is neatly encapsulated by Luke Houghton in Memory and Mourning: ‘… the modus operandi of the literary critic must be the reverse of that of social historians who comb the texts of the elegists for nuggets of funerary history: we must proceed from what can be surmised from the standard features of Roman funerary custom to see how such material is transmuted into the stuff of poetry …’ (62). Presenting an ‘holistic’ view of Roman death will always be a complex matter given the diverse and fragmentary nature of our evidence, but these volumes suggest new ways or rework established ones to bring the debate into the twenty-first century.

In Memory and Mourning the first three papers (David Noy, Emma-Jayne Graham, Darja Šterbenc Erker) deal in different ways with the moment of death, the care of the dead body, funeral procedures and mourning. The physicality of the dead body, often forgotten, is central for Noy and Graham who deal in different ways with the moment of death and the immediate effects on the deceased. Noy discusses ‘the good death’ and its centrality in the creation of memory: last words, death masks, and the differences between dying at home or away. Graham talks about the impact of the dead body as object and argues that the sensory experience of death (including the smell of putrefaction) needs to be incorporated into the theoretical discourses scholars use to surround the process, and the implications this has for memories of the event. Šterbenc Erker returns to the different rôles of men and women around the dead body and in the funerary and mourning process, and in socially acceptable expressions of grief. Luke Houghton (on Latin love elegy), Clemence Schultze (on Dionysius of Halicarnassus), Eleanor Brooke (on Cicero's Pro Rabirio), and Jean-Michel Hulls (Statius, Silvae 3.3) all examine how the memory of death can be manipulated by the author. Elegists use death as a motif in much the same way as they use other topoi, to point up the alternative world view of elegy. Schultze and Brooke demonstrate how far reputations can be created, both negatively and positively, by careful choice of words, particularly in the laudatio (or lack of it) and in the forensic rhetoric of the courtroom. Hulls examines the idea of memory constructed through consolatio — in this particular example the manipulation by Statius of the genre and its usual themes to make a political statement. The question of whose memories and what individuals chose to privilege in their memorial lies behind the chapters by Maureen Carroll, Janet Huskinson and Valerie Hope. Using monuments as a focus Carroll examines both the self-presentation of freed slaves, and the memory created by owners who freed slaves on their death; she also takes the focus away from Rome to Gaul. Huskinson also deals directly with the creation of memory, using a single monument as a framework for thoughts on non-élites, the reassurance that funerary monuments might provide for the living, and the relevance of Philippe Ariès' The Hour of our Death (1977) for antiquity. Finally Valerie Hope, who also wrote the excellent introduction, considers how the dead were remembered through jewellery, portraits and other heirlooms. Using the highly descriptive (and erotic) epitaph to the freedwoman Allia Potestas (CIL VI 37965) she makes the point that such objects preserve memory and are given new meaning once retained and worn by the living.

Complementarily, memory and the place of the dead in the lives and landscapes of the living are the main themes of Carroll and Rempel's volume, with archaeology and material culture evidence dominant. The papers range from ancient Egypt to Roman Britain, and from the third millennium b.c. to the seventeenth century a.d. Polly Low deals with commemoration in Sparta, in a case study of the dead from Thermopylae. She debates the rôle of the individual dead and the collective memory of a singular battle in the face of other monuments and burials from the Persian Wars. Jane Rempel recreates a fascinatingly diverse landscape of the dead by examining the range of burial practices in the Boshphoran kingdoms in the fourth to third centuries b.c. She identifies a range of traditions which seem to have co-existed in close proximity, reflecting a range of local, regional and royal traditions which chose or rejected associations with Greece and Greek goods for their own reasons. The choice of Greek modes of funerary representation by Milesian immigrants to Athens makes Celine Gray's chapter a neat follow-on to Rempel. Here the monuments appear at first glance to suggest happy co-existence and integration through inter-marriage and the entry of young men into the ephebia. At the same time, however, Athenian laws continue to resist entries of foreigners into the citizen body, so the tension between citizen and non-citizen is an underlying factor in any interpretation.

Maureen Carroll deals with forgetting the dead by neglect or intention. She makes the point that while some graves were reused over time, fell into neglect or were simply built over, others were deliberately defaced or destroyed. In looking at non-imperial instances of damnatio memoriae Carroll has produced a catalogue of deliberately mutilated inscriptions or destruction/removal of images from Italy, Southern Gaul, Germany and Spain, suggesting that the desire to control memory was a shared concern. Sébastien Lepetz and William Van Andringa (and others) focus on the Porta Nocera necropolis at Pompeii and give a glimpse of the history and use and reuse of the burial area: the side-by-side existence of large monuments, small tombs with modest markers, graves with cremation urns and libation pipes. They also stress the constant traffic in a Roman cemetery, of funerals and funeral pyres occurring alongside those visiting graves, of rituals and ceremonies of the Parentalia, all happening just off a main thoroughfare into the town. Emma-Jayne Graham focuses on a rather more obscure, but not uncommon it appears, mortuary practice of os resectum. She re-evaluates existing and previously overlooked evidence and argues that retained bone fragments had a central part to play in purification rituals and the remembrance of the dead. The topographical survey of monumental tombs in Roman Britain by John Pearce results in an interesting impression of both the visual landscape and town/country/villa dynamics. In Roman Britain these monuments are also noted for their short duration (relative to Italy and other Roman provinces) suggesting that memories had equally short lives.

Martin Bommas takes the long view of the strong social connection between the living and the dead in Egypt from the Old Kingdom through to the Greco-Roman period. The dead and the living shared a world where reciprocity was key: the dead acted as mediators between gods and men and protected the living and in return the living preformed rituals for their deceased in both public and private. This close and everyday relationship is evidenced in the act of mummification but also in words: in inscriptions on stele and temples framed around the idea of Ma'at, the principle of truth and justice, and so-called ‘Letters to the Dead’. The final chapter by Susan Russell examines the aspirations of Pope Innocent X (1574–1655) to create a memorial along classical Roman lines. The Pamphilj family had already been exploiting their ancestry from Numa by building on areas associated with his legend and Innocent X extended this further with his ambitious plans for the Piazza Navona: the church of Sant'Agnese, which housed his mausoleum, the Palazzo Pamphilj and the Biblioteca Innocenziana. The complex resounded with classicizing references and stands today as a memorial to the Pamphilj but also to Innocent's appreciation of ancient ideals. Unfortunately he had to wait for over twenty years after his death to finally be interred in his church — the desire of his immediate family to retain his memory perhaps not so keen as those of the ancient Romans.

Both volumes have indexes and articles are extensively referenced. All the articles have depth and a concentration of detail which is worth more attention than the brief gloss of this review.