Sure, we’ve all seen the pyramid and the breadmakers tomb that Mary Beard loves to go on about, and sure, we all know about the ransacking of the imperial mausoleums, but where is everyone else?? 1200 years of prominence and thats all thats been preserved? Were Romans so despised that subsequent civilizations desecrated every Roman grave they came across? Did other Romans vandalize or destroy these graves? Where is Cicero? Cato? Brutus or Cassius? Marius…Sulla…the Grachii…so many huge and influential personalities and yet so few surviving monuments. One would expect a great majority to not survive but its rather astonishing just how few actually remain
I really have to question the premise here--for example here is a picture I took in Hierapolis in Turkey--a massive field of tombs and tomb monuments. Likewise, if you go to Rome today you can stroll along the Appian Way today you can have a very pleasant walk along the ancient road and see plenty of tombs. Granted there is nothing quite so remarkable as the Pyramid of Giza, as few things in this world are, but after you go along the Appian Way you can go to the Mausaleum of Augustus or Hadrian.
Classic Roman cities were in fact ringed by tombs, called necropolises, because burials were not allowed inside the city boundary. This was not as commonly thought because of ritual pollution, but rather as a sumptuary measure, and they were part of the fabric of extramural life.
