Funeral Pyre

A funeral pyre is a wooden structure built over a fire and used in funeral rituals for the cremation of a corpse. The raised structure allows for air to flow underneath the flames, but it also allows for better viewing of the pyre in ceremonies attended by mourners. Outdoor cremations, a feature of aristocratic funerals in the ancient Near East, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, are no longer performed in the West but are still common in India.

Cremations were performed in the West in the Bronze and Iron ages alongside inhumations. Pyres and funeral biers are attested in ancient Greek and Latin literature, and depictions appear on Greek pottery from the archaic and classical periods. In Homer's Iliad Book 23, Patroklos is cremated on a pyre after the sacrifice of horses, dogs, hostages, and the placement of gifts and armor. The live cremation of Croesus, King of Lydia, on a pyre in Herodotus's Histories (Book 1) is interrupted by rain and serves as a cautionary tale on divine retribution. In Greek mythology, the hero Herakles was cremated as a vehicle for his apotheosis (see Euripides' Herakles). Following Homer's lead of incorporating cremations within epic narratives, the cremation of warriors on pyres, following a battle, became part of the funeral and burial trope in Latin epic poetry. The individual and mass cremations of warriors are found in the epics of Ennius, Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus.

In ancient Rome, cremations and inhumation burials were performed contemporaneously. The archeological and historical evidence for cremations is extensive. For cremations that took place where the deceased would be buried, a corpse was placed on a bier (feretrum) or pyre (rogus) and after the cremation, the place of cremation was covered with solid to make a mound (bustum), which could be covered by a funeral monument. To mark the spot where Julius Caesar was cremated, however, a temple was built in the Roman Forum that signified his apotheosis. If the cremated remains were to be stored elsewhere, the ashes and bone fragments were collected and placed in an urn, normally with a finger of the deceased, which was removed before cremation. The urn could be deposited in mausoleums, family tombs, funeral monuments themselves, including sarcophagi, or in burial niches (columbaria), all of which were located outside the urban center of Rome (marked by the religious boundary that encircled the city called the pomerium) until the Imperial period when the cremated remains of Trajan were deposited in a column (dedicated in 113 C.E.) that still stands in his forum. Due to the amount of wood needed to sustain an appropriate temperature for cremation over several days, the ceremony was expensive and time-consuming, even for modest cremations. Interruptions due to inclement weather were common, and the ceremony would be resumed once the weather improved.

Pyres were associated with the Roman Imperial funerary ritual (from the 1st to the 3rd centuries C.E.). The corpse of the emperor Augustus was attended by his wife Livia as it burned on a pyre for several days. As rituals associated with the cult of the emperor increased, the corpses or wax images of later Roman emperors were cremated on pyres as a vehicle for their apotheosis. A wax image of the emperor Pertinax, for example, was placed inside the second level of a multitiered pyre (ustrinum), with doors and windows on the upper level, that was decorated with marble, gold, statues, tapestries, and paintings and was topped with an image of the emperor in a golden chariot. During the cremation, a bird was released to signify the emperor's apotheosis.

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