An elogium was an inscription in honour of a deceased person, placed on tombs, ancestral images and statues during the Roman era. Elogia are sometimes treated as synonymous with tituli, the identifying inscriptions on wax images of deceased ancestors displayed in the atrium of a noble family's house, though an elogium is shorter than the laudatio funebris, or funeral oration. The text was originally usually written in Saturnian verse, though later examples could be in hexameters, iambic hexameters, distichs or prose. A characteristic feature of the elogium is its use of the nominative case for the name of the deceased, rather than the dative case used later in funerary literature.
Facts
Place of Origin Notable ExampleTomb of the Scipios elogia (Appian Way, Rome) 1 Defining TraitUses the nominative case for the deceased's name rather than the dative used in later funerary literature 1 Connections
Sources
1. Elogium (literary genre) - Wikipedia
History section, Elogia as funerary writings, paragraph 1
From the end of the 5th century BC onwards, probably in imitation of a Greek custom, the elogia were poetic epigrams with praising mention of dignities and victories.
History section, Elogia as funerary writings, paragraph 2
In the Tomb of the Scipios, a republican funerary monument on the Appian Way, funerary inscriptions on the sarcophagi of the Scipions can be considered elogia.
Opening definition section
Characteristic of the elogium is the nominative case used for the name of the deceased and not, as it was the case later in the funerary literature, the dative.
View the SourceFrequently Asked Questions
What marks an elogium apart from later Roman funerary inscriptions?
The deceased is named in the nominative case rather than the later dative.
The characteristic feature of the elogium is that the name of the deceased appears in the nominative case, whereas later funerary literature used the dative. Elogia were inscriptions honouring the dead on tombs, ancestral images and statues, often first written in Saturnian verse. The inscriptions on the sarcophagi in the Tomb of the Scipios on the Appian Way can be considered elogia.
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