Imagĭnes
The Roman portrait-masks of deceased members of a family; they were made of wax and
painted, and probably fastened to the busts. They were kept in small wooden shrines let into
the inner walls of the
atrium. Inscriptions under the shrines recorded
the names, merits, and exploits of the persons they referred to. The images were arranged and
connected with one another by means of coloured lines, in such a way as to exhibit the
pedigree (
stemma) of the family. On festal days the shrines were opened,
and the busts crowned with bayleaves. These portrait-masks must have been originally used for
covering the faces of the dead, like the light metal masks of Phœnicia, Carthage,
and Mycenae. (See
Persona.) At family funerals,
there were persons specially appointed to walk in procession before the body, wearing the
masks of the deceased members of the family, and clothed in the
insignia
of the rank which they had held when alive. The right (
ius imaginum) of
having these ancestral images carried in procession was one of the privileges of the nobility,
and distinguished the
nobilis from the
novus homo.
If a person died not being in the possession of full civic rights, his image could not be
exhibited, as in the case of Brutus and Cassius (Polyb. vi. 53; Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxv. 2.6, 7;
Tac. Ann. iii. 76; Mommsen,
Hist. of
Rome, book iii. chap. xiii.).
