Honoring the Dead. Many Roman relief sculptures survive in the form of sarcophagi for private patrons. Cremation seems to have been the dominant means of disposing of the dead from the time of the late republic to about 100 C.E., but by the time of Hadrian's rule a change in burial customs led to the use of large stone or marble caskets on a more widespread basis than before. While some late republican examples are known, such as the tomb of the Gessius family (30-13 B.C.E.), most funerary sculptures date from the second century C.E. onward. These give further glimpses of sculptural forms and techniques within the Roman world, and may well have been produced by the same workshops that worked on public monuments. Subjects varied widely, and Greek myths seem to have been popular, as do generic scenes of...