Tauris' Ancients and Moderns series of thematic reception studies aims ‘to complicate some of the standard narratives about the “legacy” of Greece and Rome’ (p. ix). In this respect E. certainly succeeds with this brilliant addition to the series, but the volume is frustrating at times due to several shortcomings. Caueat lector, however, as the book's title is somewhat misleading: the reader desirous of an overview of ancient perceptions of death and the afterlife will instead have to refer to C. Edwards and M. Mirto and their respective discussions of Roman and Greek thought.Footnote ¹ E. focusses exclusively on the nexus between ancient and modern funerary practices – treatment of the body, mourning, commemoration and ‘rites’ more generally. The ritual of death is considered strictly as a social phenomenon, with little discussion of why the ancient or modern traditions emerged as they did. The two intersect, E. suggests, in the inherent theatricality of both and the ‘paradox of the dead as undead’ (p. xii). Precisely how, though, is muddled by the growing diversity of modern rites that increasingly precludes generalisation, a problem to which E. alludes but never fully resolves.

Anyone familiar with extant literature on funeral practice in the ancient world will find little that is either fresh or provocative from E.'s distillation of more dense material. As mandated by the series, there is prevalent generalisation of ‘antiquity’ across Greek and Roman lines and discussion that makes only brief nods to diachronic development, but such is the nature of the inquiry and one cannot find fault with the author. The structure of E.'s work, his focus on the performative aspect of funerary rites, the examples cited from the Roman context (Caesar's funeral, Pertinax's effigy) and even the titles of chapters (‘Disposal’) clearly draw heavily from his 2008 monograph Reading Death in Ancient Rome; indeed his current work pursues an interest mentioned in his 2008 preface (p. xi).

In Chapter 1, ‘Funerals’, E. compares ancient and modern practices for displaying and viewing the dead, finding several shared strands uniting the two. Ancient and modern rites are joined by the common aim of avoiding direct contact with death while seeking to preserve a static memory of the deceased for the living. Both were controlled by legislation, but the deepest source of continuity is the theatrical exhibition of the dead ‘before mourners who also perform the simultaneous roles of actor audience’ (p. 23). The ancient tradition is described through epigraphic and literary sources, and while E.'s discussion clearly shows an exhaustive knowledge of the ancient sources one wonders to what extent the Classical Athenian, Roman Republican and Imperial, and Etruscan conventions he cites can be coherently synthesised into one ‘Ancient’ approach. His choice of modern exempla brings to light one of the conceptual conundrums of the book: each contemporary funeral he describes seems by nature to be exceptional and atypical, chosen from an almost exclusively American context that seems ill-suited to embody the modern ‘norm’, if such a thing exists.

Chapter 2 discusses ancient and modern methods of disposing of corpses and centres on cremation as the main vector of commonality, while admitting room for divergence in the diversity of modern disposal methods. E. tends to focus on the modern, and the revival of cremation in Europe and the West is posited as a ‘part of the dialogue’ (p. 31) between the two that was at first self-consciously neo-Classical but since has become less concerned with tradition. He then shifts to a fascinating discussion of the iconography, in sequence, of Etruscan, Roman, Early Christian, then Medieval and Renaissance-era sarcophagi that is both thorough and fluid. His argument for the thematic continuity of sarcophagic iconography of the afterlife along with shared mechanisms of depicting the dead as living is wholly convincing. Vectors of discontinuity, however, in the realm of exhumation and committal rites to which he alludes at the chapter's close are never fully teased out, and again the generic North-American Christian funeral is taken as paradigmatic of modern practice.

Shifting to a somewhat broader scope, E. then dedicates his third chapter to the geography of cemeteries and their place within urban landscapes across time. Modern placement of cemeteries outside urban centres is seen as imitation of ancient relegation of the dead to the urban periphery, just as the modern continuation of funerary portraiture is inspired by prevalent self-identification of the dead among the ancients. As elsewhere, Rome dominates the discussion, in which E. provides a somewhat jarringly detailed account of the evolving funerary landscape of Rome through to the nineteenth century, homing in on neoclassical signifiers as evidence of further continuity. His description of Christian appropriation of pagan funerary tradition within the city is compelling, as is the vast majority of a discussion which unfortunately – and somewhat abruptly – ends with the nineteenth century.

The final chapter, ‘Cult of the Dead’, is where the real value of the book lies as E. thoughtfully reveals the deepest conceptual continuities between past and present tradition while disentangling their divergence of practice. It is here that E. provides his most coherent and salutary analysis of modern practice as well as ancient. The treatment of the dead as undead forms the core of the discussion as E. covers mechanisms of self identification by ancient (epitaphs, monuments) and modern (video and voice recordings) dead, as well as the means by which ongoing relationships with the dead were fostered by the living. Comparing the Roman parentalia with contemporary digital memorials to the dead reveals a perpetuation of ancient attempts to maintain a vibrant connection to the dead amongst their descendants, though with the advent of the internet contemporary commemoration is freed from the old hindrances of space and periphery. E. lists numerous modern practices that are continuations of ancient traditions by other means, in so doing remaining faithful to the stated aims of the series while providing some sense of closure to his discussion. The thought-provoking epilogue summarises the unifying theme of ‘the dead as undead’ that binds ancient and modern practices. The questions raised regarding broader thematic developments in modern practice – joyous commemoration over sombre, self-definition and the involvement of the living in planning their own funerals, etc. – are of the sort that one wishes had been more fully addressed in the rest of the work.

True to form for a book devoted to a more general readership, E.'s references are sparse and the endnotes brief, with a two-page bibliography that provides a concise guide to further resources. While E.'s past and present efforts have provided invaluable contributions to our understanding of ancient funerary practice, in extending his discussion into the more diverse and disorienting world of modern funerary practice it seems that he tends to take the exceptional or idiosyncratic contemporary (American) examples as definitive of the norm. As a result the reader is left with a far less grounded or stable notion of modern trends.

In fairness to E., the principal shortcomings of this book – brevity, at times tendentious and unclear discussion of modern practices, and summary remarks on the ancient – recur amongst reviews of other works in this series, and thus perhaps reflect systemic rather particular issues.Footnote ² Nevertheless this is an ambitious and thoughtful investigation of what is by no means an easy subject to address in either the ancient or modern context, and one that will surely prompt the sort of reflection and consideration imagined by the editors in a wide audience.