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passer-by in conversation! The following example, which was discovered in Rome, is no more pungent than most:
Stranger, the bones of the man buried herein Entreat you not to piss upon
This tomb. If you are a kind-hearted man, Mix wine, drink of it, and give some to me.
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This last thought invites us to shift our attention to the second question which needs to be considered at this point, namely the attitude that the Romans adopted toward their dead. Collectively, the deceased were referred to as the manes, which we may translate as shades or spirits, and Cicero leaves us in no doubt that they were to be numbered among the gods. He makes the point twice in his essay On the Laws, first decreeing that "kinsmen who have died shall be considered gods" (Leg. 2.22), and later commenting that the nine days following immediately upon the funeral, when the house of the deceased was ritually purified, would not have been considered holidays "if our ancestors had not desired that those who have quit this life should be numbered among the gods” (Leg. 2.55). This belief is the source of the expression dis manibus — "to the divine spirits of the dead" that may still be read on literally scores of thousands of Latin tombstones. This always appears in the plural, and it is only in the course of the first century B.C. that it is conjoined with the name of the individual or individuals whose remains have been interred. For this reason, it is generally accepted today that before this date the individual was not venerated as such by his descendants, but blended insensibly into the assemblage of earlier ancestors, who were tended collectively. This may well be the case; several other aspects of traditional Roman behavior that touch upon the cult of the dead also experienced convulsive change during the late Republic, a point to which we shall return later. For now, let it merely be observed that in the following three centuries this cult not only persisted but actually grew steadily more elaborate.
How did the Romans attend to these divine spirits? At the heart of their system lies a belief common to many cultures, the notion that the dead neither require nor benefit from prayers to the celestial gods, but are sustained by the necessities of life itself,