Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Ustrina

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. 

USTRI'NA and -UM. A place where the dead body was burnt, apart from the sepulchre in which the ashes were deposited, as contradistinguished from Bustum, which was contained within the sepulchral enclosure. (Festus s. BUSTUM. Inscript. ap. Mur. 1345. 12. ap. Orelli. 4384, 4385.) Thus it would appear that the ustrinum was a public burning-ground, to which the bodies of persons not sufficiently wealthy to acquire a piece of land for the purpose contiguous to their own sepulchres were carried by their surviving relatives, and burnt, their ashes being afterwards transported to the family tomb. In such cases a convenience of this nature was absolutely necessary, as the law prohibited the lighting of a pyre within a certain distance of another man's monument. Considerable remains are still extant of a grand burning place on the Appian Way, about five miles from Rome. It was surrounded on two sides by a high wall of masonry, constructed in the Etruscan style of peperino stone, and flagged with the same material, which possesses particular powers for resisting the action of fire. One wall is 200 feet in length, the other 350. On the side towards the street, there were spacious porticos for the shelter of spectators, or persons attending the funeral procession; and at the back, several apartments for those who had the custody of the place, as well as magazines for storing wood, and for keeping the various instruments and utensils employed at the conflagration.