The bitter taste of death: mourning for the young in ancient Rome

The Bitter Taste of Death Just as fruits when they are green are with difficulty plucked from the tree, but when ripe and mellow fall of themselves, so, with the young, death comes as a result of force, while with the old it is the result of ripeness. Cicero De Senectute 71 1The metaphor that compared the human body (or life) to the fruit of a tree was an established one in both Latin literature and epitaphs. 2 The comparison served to negotiate, and offer consolation for, the pain and shock associated with the premature deaths of the young, since it was only natural, and thus to be accepted, that some fruits would never reach maturity.In recent decades, how these immature fruits of ancient Rome were thought of, imagined, and treated has been much discussed, if in a somewhat polarised fashion.It has been argued that either the death of children was rationalised to the point of indifference or was a source of great regret and sorrow.An aspect of these debates is the Latin word acerbus (bitter, sharp, acrid) and its use in death contexts.On the one hand, the linking of acerbus with death (mors acerba), which utilised the comparison between youth and unripe fruit (including the sour taste of the latter), represented the deeply bitter and painful experience of early death.On the other hand, the linking of acerbus with the funeral ( funus acerbum) may suggest that those who died prematurely were buried in a perfunctory fashion.Here I will explore uses of acerbus, mainly in Rome and Italy during the late Republic and first two centuries ce , and consider what constituted a 'bitter death' and 1