Yes. Corpse-grabbing is quite extensively covered in surviving ancient culture.

Medical dissection

Corpses are believed to have been illicitly dissected in ancient times, despite being taboo. It is thought that in the Hellenistic period, the corpses of executed criminals would have been employed by doctors as an anatomical source. In Galen's De Anatomicis Administrationibus ('On Anatomical Procedures'), Galen recommends study of medical literature but also stresses the importance of

"[examining] assiduously with your own eyes the human bones themselves".

Galen alludes to Alexandria as the best place for young doctors to visit,

"... Because the physicians there employ ocular demonstration in teaching osteology to students. For this reason, if for no other, try to visit Alexandria"

, implying that human dissection is yet occurring.

Despite human dissection being seemingly out-of-bounds in Rome, he goes on to give a detailed account of how he 'dodged' taboos concerning human dissection. For example:

"It [is] possible to see something of human bones. I, at least, have done so often on the breaking open of a grave or tomb. Thus once a river, inundating a recent hastily made grave, broke it up, washing away the body. The flesh had putrefied, though the bones still held together in their proper relations. It was carried down a stadium and, reaching marshy ground, drifted ashore. This skeleton was as though deliberately prepared for such elementary teaching.

And on another occasion we saw the skeleton of a brigand, lying on rising ground a litde off the road. He had been killed by some traveller repelling his attack. The inhabitants would not bury him, glad enough to see his body consumed by the birds which, in a couple of days, ate his flesh, leaving the skeleton as if for demonstration."

If human corpses were lacking, then dissecting an ape could be employed as a substitute.

"Choose those apes likest man, with short jaws and small canines. You will find other parts also resembling man's, for they can walk and run on two feet."

Magic and myth

Witches, in Roman folk myth, are alleged to have been blamed for corpse stealing for their spells. Horace's Satres (1.8.19) features Witches on the Esquiline hill collecting bones. In Apuleius' Metamorphosis (or 'the Golden Ass'), Thessalian witches are described as cannibalistic and corpse stealing (2.21-30). This shouldn't be received as proof of genuine cannibal witches in the ancient world, but it suggests cultural familiarity with the concept. See also Lucan's 'Pharsalia' (6.413-830) concerning a witch who tells the future for Pompey, using the corpse of a dead soldier. She opens the man's body, pours in blood and potions, and brings the man back to life for necromantic purposes.

Political grandstanding

Romans could make a big deal out of the corpses and tombs of their ancestors, and this could be exploited for political purposes. Domitian (Emperor) is alleged to have destroyed a man's tomb and had his remains thrown into the sea, supposedly because the tomb had been constructed with public funds (Suetonius, 'Life of Domitian' 8).

Source and further reading

Valerie M. Hope (2000), 'The Treatment of the Corpse in Ancient Rome', in Hope and Marshall (eds) 'Death and Disease in the Ancient City'. Routledge, pages 104-127. See especially 'Interfering with the body' (pages 120-122) and 'interfering with the grave' (122-125).