Libitina’s Laborers: Praeficae and the Origins of the Roman Funerary Trade

No figure in the shadowy history of the Roman funerary trade has attracted more interest than the praefica, a woman hired to perform at Roman funerals, and no feature of her work has excited more curiosity than her song, the nenia. Notable already to Aristotle, the praefica and her nenia were obscure and a matter of speculation to Roman antiquarians by the end of the second century BCE. In this paper I attempt to unravel the early history of the praefica by tracing the decline of her role as praise-singer and the reduction of her funerary function to that of leader of the ritual lament, which included at the end a generic song enrolling the newly deceased into the community of the dead, the nenia. I locate the period of transition around the time of the Second Punic War, when funerary orations delivered in the Roman Forum first begin to become common, and I pinpoint a proximate cause of the change in the aftermath of the Battle of Cannae in 216, when Roman authorities restricted public mourning.