It is an often posed idea that the messages we leave behind with our discarded and or memorialized everyday objects will be interpreted thousands of years from now, by historians and archeologists to let those that live long after us have some idea of who we were. Roman history is a compilation of fragmented written works, but is much more dependant on archeological evidence for existing information. The evidence of the Roman Empire stretches across practically all of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and much of it is in the form of archeological ruins. Some of these ruins are significant to Roman culture in that they still sport the writing of real everyday Romans. One artifact that has recently come to the forefront as a grouping of very telling artifacts is tombstone inscriptions. From the "dead Roman guys" we get a lofty interpretation of idealized society, as well as many messages of rhetorical musing, all of which is valuable, but from tombstone inscriptions we get a sense of the everyday man and woman, and what was important for their ancestors to memorialize them with.
             Seneca in De Providentia writes, "Fate leads us on and the first hour of our birth has ordained the rest of each person's life. Cause depends on cause, the long series of things lengthens [the chain of] public and private events. Therefore we must endure everything courageously." 1 The philosophers, who have determined a great deal of the understanding we have with regard to Roman society and Roman beliefs and ideals, discuss lofty ideas about the nature of the divine, the place of providence and the manner in which all men live their lives, by providence from birth to death. While in contrast the tombstones of everyday people express how people really lived and what was important to them, almost regardless of their beliefs in the lofty ideas of those like Seneca and other philosophers. In Shelton's extensive A Sourceb...