MAUSOLEUM. - Designation of the splendid monument erected at Halicarnassus by Artemisia in memory of her husband Mausolus, lord of Caria (352 B.C.), extended to the most grandiose funerary monuments (Strabo, V, 3, 8; Valerius Maximus, IV, 6; Pliny, XXXVI, 5, 4). From the typical primitive method of burial in earthen and stone tumuli erected over the corpse, in use among the agricultural populations of the Bronze Age, there was a gradual transition to the tumuli of the Etruscans of the necropolises of Caere, Tarquinia and Vulci, with a cone of earth surrounded by a crepidine (7th-6th centuries B.C.).
The Romans adopted the system, developing the crepidine upward with construction in rubble stone. In the 1st century B.C. the support of the cone rises as a cylindrical body, creating the type of sepulchral monument that culminates in the type of tomb represented by that of Caecilia Metella (2nd half of the 1st century B.C.) at the first mile of the Appian Way. Around the great mausoleum of Augustus, near the Via Flaminia (28 B.C.), with a high drum with an annular corridor and an overlying tumulus covered to its very top with evergreen trees, are ranged the contemporary burial-mausoleums of Casal Rotondo on the Appian Way, of Lucilius Paetus on the Salaria, of the Plautii on the Tiburtina, of Munatius Plancus near Gaeta, and numerous others. The mausoleum of cylindrical form became during the 1st century of the Empire the type of patrician tomb, of a character that may be called national. Of singular splendor was the mausoleum of Hadrian (132-39 A.D.), today Castel Sant'Angelo, with its square base zone on which rises the cylindrical core enclosing the sepulchral cell. Also the monument known as that of Septimius Severus, on the Via Tuscolana, and the one known as that of the Gordians (Tor de' Schiavi), on the Prenestina, are of the same type with a circular plan and a domed crowning, and so too the tomb known as that of Gallienus at the third mile of the Appian Way (3rd century) and the mausoleum of Romulus, son of Maxentius, near the circus that takes its name from that Emperor. Approximately the same structure was had by the numerous mausoleums that, after the triumph of Christianity, were erected around the Roman basilicas as tombs of members of the imperial house and of illustrious Roman families, such as, for example, that of the Anicii, near the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican (4th-5th centuries). To the Constantinian period belongs the mausoleum known as that of St. Helena, mother of Constantine (Tor Pignattara), at the second mile of the Via Labicana, as is shown by the structure of the masonry, the style of the construction and the great porphyry sarcophagus found there, now in the Vatican Museum.
A notable contemporary monument is the mausoleum of Constantina, daughter of Constantine and wife of Hannibalianus and then of Gallus Caesar, near the basilica of St. Agnes outside the walls. It is a rotunda, within a cemetery enclosure of the 4th century, with an annular plan and a barrel vault decorated with magnificent mosaics representing vines and cupids intent on the operations of the vintage, symbols of the faith, still wrapped in figurations of a pagan character.
The series of mausoleums is solemnly closed by that of Theodoric (d. 526) in Ravenna, in which elements of diverse origin are fused, while it remains Roman in substance and in full correlation with the analogous monuments that preceded it. - See plate XXX.
Bibliography13 works
Gioacchino Mancini