Now there were at Rome several ministers, public servitors, and officials, who had charge of all that appertained to funerals, such as the libitinarii, the designatores, and the like.  All of which was wisely instituted by Numa Pompilius, as much to teach the Romans not to hold things relating to the dead in horror, or fly from them as contaminating to the person, as in order to fix in their memory that all that has had a beginning in birth must in like manner terminate in death, birth and death both being under the control and power of one and the same deity; for they deemed that Libitina was the same as Venus, the goddess of procreation.  Then, again, the said officers had under their orders different classes of serfs whom they called, in their language, the pollinctores, the sandapilarii, the ustores, the cadaverum custodes, intrusted with the care of anointing the dead, carrying them to the place of sepulture, burning them, and watching them.  “After pollinctores had carefully washed, anointed, and embalmed the body, according to the custom regarding it and the expense allowed, they wrapped it in a white linen cloth, after the manner of the Egyptians, and in this array placed it upon a bed handsomely prepared as though for the most distinguished member of the household, and then raised in front of the latter a small dresser shaped like an altar, upon which they placed the usual odors and incense, to burn along with tapers and lighted candles....  Then, if the deceased was a person of note, they kept the body thus arranged for the space of seven consecutive days, inside the house, and, during that time, the near relatives, dressed in certain long robes or very loose and roomy mantles called ricinia, along with the chambermaids and other women taken thither to weep, never ceased to lament and bewail, renewing their distress every time any notable personage entered the room; and they thought that all this while the deceased remained on earth, that is to say, kept for a few days longer at the house, while they were hastening their preparations for the pomp and magnificence of his funeral.  On the eighth day, so as to assemble the relatives, associates, and friends of the defunct the more easily, inform the public and call together all who wished to be present, the procession, which they called exequiae, was cried aloud and proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet on all the squares and chief places of the city by the crier of the dead, in the following form:  ’Such a citizen has departed from this life, and let all who wish to be present at his obsequies know that it is time; he is now to be carried from his dwelling.’”