Love, death, and funerals in ancient Rome: on the goddess Libitina

Abstract

One of the most striking characteristics of Roman funerals, is that they and the related personnel were associated with a suburban grove consecrated to Libitina, whose name can also metonymically mean ‘death’. Several ancient writers talk about this goddess, and occasionally associate her with Venus. In this paper, I shall use metonymy to explore the semantics of the deity, and I shall argue that Libitina was a liminal deity, whose position at the margins of the city was mirrored by her position at the margins of Roman polytheism. This shows the strong interconnection between language, urbanity and religion.