Tomb of the Scipios

Step off the road and the air changes. It turns cool and damp, and it smells faintly of wet stone and old earth. Underfoot, the ground slopes gently down into the hillside. Above you, the traffic of modern Rome fades to a low hum. Ahead, dark passages lead into soft volcanic rock. This is the Tomb of the Scipios, one of the oldest family burial places in the city.

You are standing beside the ancient line of the Appian Way, the great road that ran south from Rome toward Capua and, later, all the way to Brindisi. Romans did not bury their dead inside the city. So the roads leading out of Rome were lined with tombs — some modest, some grand. Travellers arriving in the capital passed between rows of family monuments. The message was clear. Before you met the living Romans, you met their ancestors.

This tomb belonged to the Cornelii Scipiones, a branch of one of the most powerful families of the Roman Republic. The Republic was the period before the emperors, when Rome was governed by elected magistrates and the Senate. The Scipios produced consuls, generals and censors for generation after generation. Work on the tomb most likely began in the early third century before Christ. That makes it older than almost every famous ruin you will see in Rome today.

Look closely at the rock around you. The chambers are cut directly into tufa, a soft stone formed from compacted volcanic ash. Tufa is easy to carve but quick to crumble. You can see the marks of tools, the rough ceilings, and places where the walls have been propped up and reinforced in modern times. The plan is a rough square of corridors, with niches along the walls. In those niches, the family placed its dead.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The Scipios did not cremate their dead. In this period, many Roman families burned the body and kept the ashes in an urn. But the Cornelii buried their dead whole, in stone sarcophagi. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder noted that the first member of the Cornelian clan to be cremated was the dictator Sulla, much later. So this tomb is full of coffins, not urns — a family tradition carried in stone.

The most important coffin belonged to Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 BC. His name, Barbatus, means 'the bearded one'. The sarcophagus you see here is a copy. The original is now in the Vatican Museums. It is a handsome object, carved in grey peperino stone, with a frieze of triglyphs and rosettes along the top and curling volutes at the ends. These are Greek decorative forms. They show how early Rome was already borrowing the visual language of the Greek world.

The inscriptions are the real treasure. Barbatus's coffin carries a short poem praising his virtue and his military campaigns. It is written in a very early form of Latin, older than the Latin of Cicero or Virgil. The spelling looks strange even to scholars. The verse follows an archaic Roman rhythm called the Saturnian metre, which was later abandoned. For historians of language, these few lines are precious. They are among the oldest surviving examples of Latin poetry carved in stone.

Other epitaphs from the tomb tell quieter stories. One young Scipio died before he could hold high office. His inscription almost apologises for this. It says, in effect, that if he had lived longer, his deeds would have matched the glory of his ancestors. You can hear the pressure in those words. In a family like this, a life was measured against the honours of the dead lined up beside you.

Now for a surprise. The most famous Scipio of all — Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal at Zama in 202 BC — is probably not buried here. The historian Livy reports that Africanus died at his villa in Liternum, on the coast near Naples, after falling out with politicians in Rome. Livy also mentions statues on this tomb's façade, said to show Africanus, his brother, and the poet Ennius. Whether the poet himself lay here is still debated.

That façade was added later, probably in the second century before Christ. It would have faced the road, painted and dressed with columns and statues, like a stage set for the family's reputation. Only fragments survive today. Traces of painted plaster have been found in layers, showing that the front was redecorated more than once. Imagine it bright with colour, seen from a passing cart. Here, a family advertised its glory to every traveller on the road.

Over the centuries, the tomb fell out of use and out of memory. Later Romans built over parts of it. In imperial times, a house rose on top of the hill. Then the site was buried and forgotten. It was found by chance in the seventeenth century, and explored more fully in 1780, when the Barbatus sarcophagus was discovered. Sadly, the excavators of that time removed many objects, and some burials were disturbed. Much of what was here is now lost.

The area around the tomb is worth a slow look too. The small green park outside belongs to the same archaeological zone, close to the Porta San Sebastiano, the gate in the Aurelian Walls where the Appian Way leaves the city. These walls came centuries after the tomb. So the Scipios, buried outside Rome, ended up inside it. Nearby lie other ancient burial sites, including small chambers where freedmen and servants were laid to rest in rows of niches.

Before you leave, stand for a moment at the entrance and look back into the dark. The stone is rough and plain. The famous coffin is a copy. Many names are missing. And yet this is the place where a Roman family told the world who it was, in the oldest Latin we can still read. As you walk out into the light, notice the road beneath you. It is the same road those ancestors faced — still leading away from Rome.