L’opzione della sepoltura individuale e familiare in età tardoantica e il tema dell’identità religiosa. Questioni di metodo

New investigations into a monumental Late Antique mausoleum (a quadrangular building on two levels) located at the fourth mile of the Appian Way, in the nineteenth-century property of the Lugari brothers, provide some ideas for returning to the discussion of pagan burials in the Suburbs of Rome, especially from the point of view of the validity of the parameters for their identification. In fact the poor tangibility of paganism in burial arrangements is a significant issue in the overall problems of funerary organisation in Late Antique Rome. The issue is also inevitably linked to the more general question of the actual strength and consistency of pagan groups in the city, which in 2011 Alan Cameron provocatively proposed to consider by now weak and disappeared by the end of the fourth century.