The old practice was for every funeral to be held at night, and “funeral torches” were once about as common along the streets as the more festive marriage torches. But under the Empire the greater display can, of course, be made by daytime, although by a peculiar survival a few torch bearers will solemnly march along in the procession as if to outvie the sunlight. The mustering of a large funeral procession calls for no mean executive skill. If the deceased is from an old family, persons must be hired to wear all the death masks found in his atrium, and costumes improvised or rented so that the wearers can appear as consuls, prætors, etc., and all the various articles and exhibits needful for the procession must be assembled. Above all there must appear at the house of mourning a clever Greek actor, selected partly because of some physical resemblance to the dead. This is the _archimimus_, who carefully confers with Gordianus’s freedmen and even with his son to learn the speech, mannerisms, and the personal foibles of the departed. =152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked “Ancestors.”=--At last at a time sure to command the best attention, the criers begin going about all the streets where Gordianus is likely to have had friends. They shout a formula in quaint, archaic Latin. “This citizen, Quintus Gordianus, is being surrendered to death. For those who find it convenient, now is the time for his funeral. He is being borne from his house!” and the procession sets forth commanded by a master-undertaker--the pompous _designator_. At the head marches a band of players, their flutes, lyres, and dulcimers keeping up a most melancholy music. Then unavoidably follows a whole platoon of professional clowns and buffoons singing ribald songs and shouting very coarse jokes to the thronging spectators. Next, apparently, there walks Gordianus himself--it is the archimimus dressed like the ex-consul, imitating his gait, gestures, and voice, and even making broad personal jests at the expense of the deceased. Then follows the really imposing part of the display, and the bereaved widow and her son thrill with aristocratic pride at the thought of it. Theirs is a very old house, and a hundred actors are needed to wear all the wax _imagines_ (often battered and blackened) from the great cupboards in the atrium. All his “curule ancestors” going back to the Gallic invasion seem to be accompanying Gordianus to the grave. The spectators are checking off the “consuls” and “ædiles” on their fingers, and at last some cry “a censor,” and presently even more admiringly a “dictator.”[91] One can almost feel that it is no misfortune to die, if only one can look forward properly to this moment of posthumous glory.