Candle, Torch, or Wreath
Returning to the text at Pisa, at the same time as it allows private citizens to participate in the inferiae, the decree also establishes clear limits to that participation. Indeed the emphasis of the decree is arguably on the limitation: each citizen was restricted to bringing only a single item of low value.
Scheid (1993, 195) makes two very brief observations without elaboration about the value of the private inferiae compared with the public sacrifices: First, he suggests that their low value might be understood in the context of sumptuary limits, legal limits on the extravagance of private spending especially in the context of banquets, funerals, and the like. Reference to sumptuary laws, however, does not seem particularly relevant here, since such laws normally dealt with curbing outlandish luxury among the highest classes and its deleterious effects on Roman discipline and morals, or with preserving the value of the estate for the deceased's heirs. It is hard to imagine that any sacrifice to the manes in commemoration of the emperor's son could be judged too luxurious. There was certainly no attempt to control the expense of the public portion of the rites, which required expensive animals. Second, Scheid suggests that the limits placed on the objects donated by individuals were meant to prevent the individual participants from overshadowing the state nature of the sacrifice. Recent work on Roman sacrifice has emphasized its role in creating, validating, and illuminating the hierarchies of both human and divine society (see, e.g., Prescendi 2007, Rupke 2001, 137-53).However, emphasizing simply the low value of the private inferiae overlooks an important detail: If the point had been only to constrain the value of the citizens' contributions, this could have been accomplished by assigning a maximum value to them. The Pisan decree, however, did not explicitly regulate the amount someone could spend, but rather limited everyone to offering only one of three specific acceptable possibilities, a single taper, a torch, or a wreath.
It is true that these were all relatively inexpensive and since each individual could only bring one, the maximum amount any privatus could spend was relatively small. However the language suggests that the objects were themselves as much the point as their cost.What was the purpose of allowing these three objects? What was the purpose of the objects offered as inferiae generally? The usual understanding of inferiae is that they were gifts of things the dead would enjoy or find useful, and thus encourage the dead to do or not do something in return for having received them. That is, inferiae were given as part of a cycle of material reciprocity, do ut des, which is familiar from Roman religion as a key part of the relationship between humans and gods. However, as has been discussed, the ceremony at Pisa marked Lucius as not divine, not a divus who could receive and be swayed by sacrifice. It is therefore unlikely that the private inferiae would have undercut this with the understanding that they were given in the hopes of encouraging Lucius to act from beyond the grave, as if he were divine.
Nicola Denzey Lewis (2013) argues convincingly that the traditional understanding of inferiae as gifts given to the dead in order to elicit some action from beyond the grave should, in fact, be rejected. Inferiae were normally not specific, useful items for the dead but rather commemorative objects such as flowers or food or items that were particular reminders of the deceased. Bringing them served as part of the social practice of celebrating a holiday, remembering the deceased, and reinforcing relationships among the living. She suggests we should thus view the act of gift-giving to the dead/manes as providing an opportunity and a language for negotiating social status and relationships and creating symbolic and social capital among the living. “A gift to the dead could redefine or reinscribe social relations among the living” (2013, 124). This approach seems appropriate in the case of inferiae functioning as imperial memorials and particularly so in the case of the private inferiae at Pisa.
There is no reason to suspect that candles, torches, or wreathes would have been especially useful or welcome to Lucius's manes, year after year. They were rather symbols of mourning and commemoration that reflected the relationship between the living and the dead and between the people of Pisa and the domus Augusta.What then of the three gifts specifically allowed as private inferiae at Pisa? Ovid lists flowers, salt, grain, bread, and wine as appropriate gifts to the dead; that is, flowers and food. The only overlap between Ovid's list and the private inferiae at Pisa is flowers. Dark blooms, especially roses and violets are, of course, well attested in Roman culture as gifts for the dead at any time and especially on particular memorial days.
If they did not choose flowers, the privati at Pisa could choose offer a taper (cereus, a wax candle or torch used for lighting) or a torch (fax). Tapers and torches are not listed in Ovid or elsewhere as inferiae, but were appropriate to a funerary context. Torchbearers accompanied the funeral cortege when the body was taken from the home to the pyre at the place of burial. For Seneca the use of tapers and torches in this way was so iconic that he used the phrase “with torch and taper” to indicate a funeral procession (Brev. Vit. 20.10, Nat 1.1.5). The practice had already been expanded in the case of Lucius. Candles accompanied his body not just at his funeral proper but also during the trip back to Rome from where he died. The candles and torches may suggest that this procession was reenacted annually at Pisa. The bringing of tapers in particular could have carried particular social meaning. During midwinter the holiday of Saturnalia was a festival that defined and stressed the social order, often through the temporary reversal or partial flattening of normal status hierarchies, but also through organized gift exchanges (On Saturnalia in general, see Dolansky 2011a with further reading). Like Parentalia, Saturnalia was partially a public festival, with state sacrifices by public priests to Saturn, and partially a private holiday that could stretch for seven days.
As part of the family festivities, the holiday gifts were exchanged among friends and family. Like Ovid's inferiae, these were normally small gifts but could be more valuable. Candles, in particular, were given to patrons (or would-be patrons), as Varro (Ling. 5.10) states “on Saturnalia candles are given to superiors” (Saturnalibus cerei superioribus mittantur). According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.7.32-33), the requirement that candles be given by clients to patrons was a matter for public regulation though the actions of a tribune.Candles could be used to publicly signal a patron-client relation at other times as well. In 85 BCE, a popularis praetor M. Marius Gratidianus, took credit for the restoration of the value of the recently devalued denarius. This made him so popular with the Roman plebs (presumably because their savings were restored to their former value) that they set up statues of him in the various neighborhoods of the city to which they brought flowers and candles (The story appears in Cicero Off. 3.80, Pliny Nat. 33.132; 34.271 on Gratidianus; see Heinrichs 2008 with bibliography in n. 2). There may have been, as Ittai Gradel (2002, 51) has pointed out, semidivine overtones to these honors, a fact which has made Gratidianus a prime example for those seeking precedents in the republic for the development of the imperial cult. However, the honors for Gratidianus are just as easily understood not as worship but as acceptance and recognition of Gratidianus as benefactor and patron. The people came together to publicly give him, or his statues, the gifts that privately dependents normally gave to their superiors. Most importantly, there is a clear status distinction and dependency between the praetor Gratidianus and the residents of the city's vici who privatim brought candles and flowers to his statues. A gift of candles could suggest, then, a particular kind of status relationship between the giver and receiver. They were, in public and private settings, an appropriate gift from a social inferior to a social superior, from a dependent to a benefactor.
By including them on the list of potential inferiae, the Pisans were, while commemorating one member of the new imperial domus, claiming and defining their relationship with the dynasty as one of clientage and dependency rather than one of political subservience.Presumably a privatus who attended the rites could also choose to give nothing at all. The language is worded such that there should be an opportunity— not that there was a requirement. In practice, the privati who participated in the ceremony may not have had much choice in whether or not to offer a gift. The rites were a demonstration of loyalty. As mentioned above, Ovid's account of the dies parentales end with the warning that when individual Romans neglected to properly celebrate the dies parentales, the whole state suffered disaster. So many died that the city was choked with the smoke of funeral pyres and the ghosts of the neglected dead haunted the streets (Fasti 2.546-556). If citizens opted out of participation in the inferiae they risked public calamity.