Funeral Processions, Veristic Portraiture, Gallic Coinage, and the Pax Augusta

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing Roman funeral processions, republican veristic portraiture, pre-conquest Gallic coinage, and the imperial political iconography of the Pax Augusta.

Pompa funebris

The aristocratic Roman funeral procession that conveyed the deceased from home through the city streets to the Forum Romanum and ultimately to a burial site outside the walls.

Anaglypha (Plutei Traiani)

Marble imperial reliefs found in the Forum Romanum depicting public civic events—such as an adlocutio and debt burning—against a continuous architectural backdrop of surrounding forum structures.

Imagines

Wax ancestral masks stored in private home cabinets and worn by actors during aristocratic funerals to represent deceased family members who had achieved curule magistracies.

Laudatio funebris

A formal public funeral eulogy delivered from the rostra by the primary heir or emperor, praising the deceased and their assembled ancestors in chronological order.

Comitium

A naturally sloped, cavea-like depression in the western Forum Romanum where public assemblies gathered and toward which mid-republican orators faced before 145 BCE.

Equus Severi

A massive equestrian statue of Septimius Severus erected in the central Forum Romanum to evoke Marcus Aurelius and reinforce dynastic legitimacy.

Lusus Troiae

An equestrian parade and mock battle performed by patrician youths in the Circus Maximus, symbolically connected to Rome's Trojan ancestry.

Veristic Portraiture

A late republican Roman style of male portraiture characterized by explicit signs of advanced age—such as deep facial furrows, receding hairlines, and baldness—to signal gravitas, wisdom, and civic service.

Tel Kedesh

A Phoenician archaeological site in Upper Galilee where clay bullae stamped with veristic Roman portraits were discovered in a context sealed prior to 146 BCE.

Bulla

A small, stamped clay sealing applied to ancient legal or commercial documents to record agreements and verify the identities of witnesses or signers.

Terme Ruler

A Hellenistic full-length bronze portrait statue found near the Baths of Constantine in Rome depicting a muscular nude male with individualized facial features.

Cheval androcéphale

A human-headed horse motif depicted on the reverse of Celtic gold staters produced in Armorica.

Carnyx

A tall Iron Age Gallic trumpet made of cast copper alloy or bronze with an elongated, open-mouthed boar or serpent head, used in warfare and religious dedications.

Dubnoreix

An Aeduan leader (called Dumnorix by Julius Caesar) who issued silver quinarii featuring his name alongside a warrior holding a carnyx, boar standard, and severed head.

Scordiski

A Celtic tribe residing near modern-day Serbia whose king held a weight stamped with a Latin inscription and an impression of a Gallic coin design from the Parisii tribe.

Pax Augusta

The Golden Age of peace inaugurated under Caesar Augustus, whose political definition encompassed both internal civic stability and external territorial conquest.

Temple of Janus

An ancient shrine in the Forum Romanum whose double doors were kept closed when peace had been established across the empire by victory, and opened during wartime.

Tropaeum Alpium

A monumental stone victory trophy erected at La Turbie in 6 BCE to commemorate Augustus's subjugation of 45 Alpine tribes and secure the frontier between Italy and Gaul.

Gallia Narbonensis

A heavily Romanized province in southern Gaul, declared a provincia pacata in 23 BCE, whose roads and borders were marked by commemorative arches and frontier trophies.

Prima Porta Augustus

A marble statue of Augustus wearing an armor cuirass carved with a scene of a Parthian returning lost Roman standards, flanked by unchained figures representing Hispania and Gallia.