=153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the Bier.=--Behind the procession of death-masks come slaves bearing on poles large crudely sketched pictures upon boards, showing incidents in the Dacian wars where their master commanded as one of Trajan’s legates. Gordianus also had dabbled in literature, and copies of his essays and poems are now tied on tall rods and carried along conspicuously by the marchers. Next comes the corpse itself--exposed to view, upon a couch decked with purple, fretted with gold, and carried aloft upon the shoulders of eight picked bearers. All can see that Gordianus wears the “triumphal ornaments,” the laurel wreath as well as the toga prætexta awarded the favorite generals in the army.[92] After that follows the family procession. Young Gordianus is robed in black, and leads by the hand his mother, a venerable matron, who wears the mourning color for women, white, and who lets her gray locks stream in disorder over her shoulders. If he had possessed sisters, they would now tear their hair, dig their nails in their cheeks, and utter piercing cries of grief. This clamor is produced sufficiently by a group of slave women led by two or three professional female wailers who, at intervals, set up a shrill chant of lamentation for the dead. Next follow a great company of Gordianus’s more distinguished friends, all walking with down-cast looks and clad in black or sad-colored togas. After them is the large retinue from the familia, first the older freedmen, then groups of ex-slaves wearing tall caps--token of manumission by will, and trying not to appear _too_ exultant in their new freedom, then bringing up the rear the whole group of actual slaves, supposed to be torn with grief at the loss of “so good a master.” =154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum.=--The procession heads at first not toward the place of the final pyre but toward the Old Forum. The honor of a public funeral oration is granted to practically every distinguished citizen, including many noblewomen. Indeed, this use of the Forum is an extremely common occurrence. The space around the orator’s stand (the _rostra_) has been cleared of idlers, and an array of suitable “curule chairs” has been set out for all the wearers of the death masks, as if they were again sitting like the magistrates of old. After a suitable delay a kinsman of the deceased, a senator somewhat vain of his reputation as an orator, mounts the rostra and delivers a fulsome eulogy. It is notorious that such “laudations” never stick closely to the truth. The audience is made to understand that Gordianus was a very Cato the Elder in personal virtue and a Scipio Africanus in his success as a general. When that ceremony is completed the whole company sets forth again--this time toward one of the gates beyond which is the funeral pyre.[93]