The writers of Roman times have handed down to us many narratives and descriptions that allow us to accurately reconstruct their rituals relating to death. We know about their ceremonies and their important symbolic significance.

The Romans believed that a person continued to live after death. It was therefore necessary to pass on the cult of the worship of the dead from father to son.

The ceremonies of purification played an important part in the funerary rites. These included funerary banquets such as the silicernium, held immediately after death, and the cena novelandis, on the ninth day of the passing. These rites, and the ceremonies held on the annual feast days of the Parentalia (February 13 - 21) and the Lemuria (in May), justified the need for sepulchral buildings and caused the poorer classes to join funeral associations to guarantee that they would also be provided with the necessary social rites when they died.

We do not know up to what point the customs continued in late-Imperial society, but there is evidence to show that they were held in Christian cemeteries. In the Tarragona Necropolis there are graves covered by mensae and triclina referring to the same idea, the funerary banquet.

The rituals are also very similar. The main ones are the fraternal farewell at the moment of entering into the final death throes, the exchange of the kiss of peace, the washing and preparation of the deceased, the procession to the doors of the church with lamentations, the prayers, the transfer of the body to the tomb and the burial, with the innovation of placing Christian symbols in the graves.