For freedmen and slaves among the Romans, the greatest mark of respect was the erection of a monument or inscription in the tomb reserved for the family they had served. Thousands of these inscriptions to slaves and faithful servants still exist, and lead us to hope that the hardships of slavery in ancient Rome were often softened by mutual kindness and respect. One of the most touching of these is in a tomb on the Appian Road, which is supposed to have belonged to the attendants of Livia, the illustrious consort of Augustus. It runs:-- "To my beloved Julia, my slave-woman, whose last illness I have watched and attended as if it had been that of my own mother." Tombs of slaves who were martyrs to the Christian religion are very frequent, and their inscriptions are usually of a most pathetic description. The ashes of the dead, after the solemn burning of the body, were carefully gathered together and placed in an often very beautifully painted urn, and taken to the family tomb on the Appian Way, where an appropriate inscription was affixed to the wall under the niche containing the vase or urn. Little glass bottles, said to be filled with the tears of the nearest relations, were likewise enclosed in the urn, or else hung up beside it. Thousands of these, brilliant, after ages, with iridescent colours, are still found in the Roman tombs. It was not imperative for a man in old Rome to wear mourning at all; but it was considered very bad taste for a male not to show some external sign of respect for his dead. With women, on the other hand, it was obligatory. On great occasions, such as the death of an Emperor or a defeat of the army in foreign parts, the Senate, the Knights, and the whole Roman people assumed mourning; and the same ceremony was observed when any general of the Roman army was slain in battle. When Manlius was precipitated from the Tarpeian rock, half the people put on mourning. The defeat at Cannæ, the conspiracy of Catilina, and the death of Julius Cæsar were also events celebrated in Rome with public mourning; but during the whole period of the Republic it was not compulsory for people to notice death, either publicly or privately. The first public mourning recorded as being observed throughout the entire Roman Empire was that for Augustus. It lasted for fifty days for the men, and the whole year for women. The next public event which called forth a decree commanding that the entire people of Rome and the Empire should wear mourning, was the death of Livia, mother of Tiberius. The same thing occurred at the death of Drusus; and Caligula followed the example, and ordered general mourning on the death of Drusilla.