Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Imagines majorum

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

IMA'GINES MAJO'RUM. Family portraits, or likenesses, consisting of waxen masks, expressing the lineaments of deceased persons, which their surviving relatives preserved with studious care in cases or armoires placed round the atrium of their mansions, regarding them as the honoured representatives of their ancestral line. (Liv. iii. 58. Sall. Jug. 85. Suet. Vesp. 1.) The mask in the annexed woodcut (Imagines_majorum/1.1), from a sepulchral bas-relief, which represents a female bewailing the death of her husband, is probably intended for one of these images in its case. The honorary distinction of handing themselves down to posterity by these representations, was only permitted to certain persons amongst the Romans; viz. those who had passed through either of the high offices of aedile, praetor, or consul; and when the funeral of any individual of the above rank and ancient lineage took place, the masks were taken out of their cases, and worn by persons who walked in front of the bier, in a similar costume, and with the same insignia as had belonged to the personages they represented during their lives. (Eichstädt. Dissertt. de Imagg. Rom.) These were called the effigies (effigies) of the family; and they personated characters even as far back as traditional history, Aeneas, the Alban kings, Romulus, &c. (Tac. Ann. iv. 9. Compare Polyb. vi. 53. Hor. Epod. 8. 2.) It will be self-evident that no authentic or contemporary likeness of any individual ascribed to such remote antiquity could ever have been in existence, even though we should admit that the original was a real historical person: but there is no doubt that the great Roman families preserved characteristic representations of their early, and even fabulous, ancestors, modelled in lineament and costume after some traditionary type, well known to, and immediately recognized by, the people at large, which are met with on coins, medals, and engraved gems (e. g. the head of Numa s. BARBATUS); precisely as all modern representations of the Saviour exhibit a particular identity of character, style, and features, which, though not professing to be genuine likenesses, are still formed after a traditionary model of very great antiquity.

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  Imagines majorum/1.1