Cenotaphium
κενοτάφιον
Cenotaphium (κενοτάφιον, κενὸς τάφος, in Virgil tumulus inanis), a cenotaph, i. e. an empty or honorary tomb. It was erected sometimes as a memorial of a person buried elsewhere (Verg. A. 3.304), more often in cases where the body had not been found for burial at all (Xen. Anab. 6.4, § 9; Verg. A. 6.505; App. Mith. 96. Compare Thuc. 2.34.3; Eur. Hel. 1057-60.) [FUNUS] Cenotaphia were considered as religiosa, and therefore divini juris, till a rescript of the emperors Ant. Pius and Verus pronounced them not to be so. (Heinecc. Ant. Rom. 2.1.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.