A Roman Marble Cinerarium , 2nd Century A.D.

of rectangular form with pedimented lid decorated in front with two confronted birds and with a palmette acroterion in each of the four corners, the frontal panel carved with an inscribed cornice and tabula, an eagle with wings outspread and head turned back at each corner, two confronted hares feeding below.

New York private collection, acquired in 1989/1990 on the London art market

The owner of the cinerarium, Aulus Egrilius, of the Palatine tribe, was aedilis sacri(s)Volkani faciundis, a priestly function attested only at Ostia for the cult of Vulcan; the worship of the god Vulcan was especially important to the port city of Ostia, where his protection was invoked against fire in the grain warehouses [horrea]). Aulus’ other sacerdotal title, pr(aetor) secundus, is not known in Ostia before the 2nd Century A.D (see R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia, Oxford, 1960, p. 173). Aulus belonged to a family of freedmen of the gens Egrilia, of which several members are known to have held similar positions in the collegium of the priests of Vulcan (see Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. XIV, Berlin, 1887, nos. 306 and 341; also see Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 111, 1996, pp. 286-288 [L’année épigraphique, 1996, pp. 107-108, no. 304]). The relative who paid for the cinerarium, Aulus Egrilius Ag(h)athopus, has a Greek cognomen like many freedmen of the Imperial period (see Solin, Die Stadtrömischen Sklavennamen, Stuttgart, 1996, vol. 2, s.v.).