[
    {
        "id": 210537,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 144,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "125\n\npasser-by in conversation! The following example, which was discovered in Rome, is no more pungent than most:\n\nStranger, the bones of the man buried herein Entreat you not to piss upon\n\nThis tomb. If you are a kind-hearted man, Mix wine, drink of it, and give some to me.\n\n26\n\n27\n\nThis 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.\n\nHow 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,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
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    {
        "id": 210548,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 155,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "136\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nThere is no particular reason why these competing points of view should be regarded as mutually exclusive, and this should be kept in mind when one turns to the Roman material. Here our best source is undoubtedly Cicero, for he defines how one acquires responsibility for the dead with great precision. Once again, the critical passage is to be found in the essay On the Laws (2.48):\n\nClearly our laws on this subject derive from the authority of the pontiffs, who imposed the performance of the rites on those to whom the property passes so that the memory of his ascendants may not perish on the death of the father of the family. After this single rule was laid down, itself quite adequate for an understanding of the proper procedure, innumerable others have come into existence and filled the books of the jurists. For they attempt to fix with exactness the persons who are obligated to perform the rites. This responsibility is altogether just in the case of the natural heirs, for there is no one who more truly takes the place of the dead. Next comes the person who, either by a death-bed gift or a will, receives as much of the estate as all the natural heirs combined... In the third place, if there is no heir, the man who acquires by possession the ownership of the greater part of the property that was in the possession of the deceased at the moment of his demise is bound by the obligation. In the fourth place, if no one acquires any of the property of the deceased, then the obligation falls upon that one of the creditors who retains most of the estate.\n\nThe cult of the dead in late republican Rome, then, seems to be governed by the same principles that Ahern uncovered in Ch'i-nan: the natural heirs have an obvious duty, but only so long as they receive at least half of their father's property. It is the latter that is the crucial element in both communities; Cicero's remark that a creditor might in the end legally be required to continue the cult of his debtor's ascendants, for example, is strongly reminiscent of Ahern's claim that one could contract an obligation to care for the deceased simply by using his property. The lack of uniformly defined obligations at the village level even on the relatively small island of Taiwan,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210549,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 156,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "137\n\nhowever, is a forceful reminder that, strictly speaking, Cicero is at most representative of his own generation. In order fully to comprehend the dynamics of Roman cult practices, one must examine the antecedents of the Ciceronian regulations as well as the changes that the cult experienced in succeeding centuries.\n\nThe latter can be accomplished with relative ease because of the large number of pertinent inscriptions that have survived, but before we turn to them, one point in the Ciceronian passage just cited must first be stressed. This is his comment that a person who receives as much of an estate as all the natural heirs combined also takes their place in ritual matters, and is held liable above all else for supplying his deceased benefactor with the expected offerings. Here Cicero is alluding to a complex process of social and legal change that had virtually played itself out by the end of the Republic. During the preceding 150 years, within the Roman elite people chose in increasing numbers to bequeath significant portions of their property to individuals outside their immediate family. In an attempt to curb this practice, a measure was passed in 169 B.C. (the lex Voconia) that forbade any single legacy to exceed the amount left to the natural heirs (Gai. Inst. 2.226). This law was so easily circumvented, however, that still another measure (the lex Falcidia) was passed in 40 B.C., this time expressly stipulating that at least 25 per cent of any estate must be set aside for these heirs (Gai. Inst. 2.227; Dig. 35.2.1.pr; cf. Plin. Ep. 5.1).67 Among the elite, therefore, the link between kinship and property thus became increasingly attenuated during the middle and late Republic, and as a result the presumption that one's natural heirs would automatically perform the necessary sacrifices at the tomb also became increasingly unwarranted. Since testamentary legacies became progressively more commonplace in the first and second centuries A.D., however, we might well expect the epigraphic evidence to reveal that the role of property in securing tomb offerings was still more pronounced during this period than it had been in Cicero's day. This is precisely the case. Specifically, the inscriptions disclose that with the passage of time more and more Romans sought to guarantee their grave offerings in future generations by conditioning the use of their property upon strict adherence to a minutely detailed set of demands. One of the",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210550,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 157,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "138\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nmost striking aspects of this development was the growing popularity of corporate legatees in lieu of individuals, and the appointment of a conditional corporate heir in the event that the original nominee either refused to accept or failed to satisfy the prescribed demands. As an example, one may cite the following inscription, which was discovered at Pisa:\n\nMarcus Naevius Restitutus, the son of Marcus, of the Galerian tribe, a soldier of the tenth praetorian cohort, rests here. In my will I have left 4,000 sesterces to the guild of the shipyard workers at the most ancient and loyal anchorage of the Pisans, from the interest on which they are to celebrate the parentalia and rosalia each year at my tomb. But if they fail to do so, then the carpenters of Pisa, after they have received 4,000 sesterces from the shipyard workers in restitution, will be obliged to honour me under these same conditions.\n\nThe sum involved here is quite modest - a mere 1 per cent of the 400,000 sesterces required for membership in the equestrian order, which in turn was only one-third of the census qualification for senators but pragmatists who suspected that they would quickly be forgotten, or reduced to the fare that Ovid recommended in the Fasti (see above), were to be encountered at every level of society, and not simply within the elite. As we have intimated earlier, it was the fear of neglect, or of shabby treatment, that was the real driving force behind such highly creative arrangements as we observe here.\n\nThis is what we discover as we move forward in time from Cicero's day. Could it not be argued, then, that property would have been still less intrusive in the preceding centuries? This would certainly explain, for example, Cicero's otherwise anachronistic insistence at one point that \"these rites shall always be preserved and handed down without interruption in our families\" (Leg. 2.47). A priori, this conclusion would seem self-evident; unfortunately, it would be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to prove simply because in the Law of the Twelve Tables, our oldest legal text (traditionally dated to the mid-fifth century B.C.), kinship and property are inseparable. This law",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]