Our knowledge of the funerary colleges is still further amplified by an inscription of a date twenty years later than that of Lanuvium.(1463) In the reign of Antoninus Pius a lady named Salvia Marcellina resolved to commemorate her husband by a gift to the college of Aesculapius and Hygia. She presented to it the site for a shrine close to the Appian Way, a marble statue of Aesculapius, and a hall opening on a terrace, where the banquets of the brotherhood should be held. To this benefaction Marcellina, along with one P. Aelius Zeno, who apparently was her brother, added two donations of HS.15,000 and HS.10,000 respectively, the interest of which was to be distributed in money, or food and wine, at six different festivals. The proportions assignable to each rank in the college were determined at a full meeting, held in the shrine of the “Divine Titus.” Marcellina attaches certain conditions to her gift. The society is to be limited to sixty members, and the place of each member, on his decease, is to be filled by the co-optation of his son. If any member chooses to bequeath his place and interest, his choice is confined to his son, his brother, or his freedman, and he is required to pay for this limited freedom of selection by refunding one-half of his burial grant to the chest of the college.(1464) The college of Aesculapius is nominally a religious and funerary corporation, yet there is only a single reference, in a long document, to the subject of burial. No information is given as to the amount of the _funeraticium_ or burial grant, the sources from which it is derived, or the conditions on which it is to be paid. The chief object of Marcellina seems to have been to connect the memory of her husband with a number of festivals, for the perpetuity of which she makes provision, to promote social intercourse, and to prevent the intrusion of strangers by making membership practically hereditary.
The colleges, of whose inner working we have tried to give a picture, are classed as religious corporations in the collections of the inscriptions. They bear the name of a god, and they provide a solemn interment for their members. But in these respects they do not differ from many other colleges which are regarded as purely secular. The truth is, that any attempt to make a sharp division of these societies on such lines seems futile. Sepulture and religion being admitted by the government as legitimate objects for association, any college, however secular in its tone, might, and probably would, screen itself under sacred names. Nor would this be merely a hypocritical pretence. It is clear that many of the purely industrial colleges, composed as they were of poor people who found it impossible to purchase a separate burial-place, and not easy, unaided, to bear the expense of the last rites, at once consulted their convenience, and gratified the sentiment of fraternity, by arranging for a common place of interment. And with regard to religion, it is a commonplace to point out that all Graeco-Roman societies, great or small, rested on religion. The state, the clan, the family, found their ideal and firmest bond in reverence for divine or heroic ancestors, a reverent piety towards the spirits who had passed into the unseen world. The colleges, as we shall see presently, were formed on the lines of the city which they almost slavishly imitated.(1465) It would be strange and anomalous if they should desert their model in that which was its most original and striking characteristic. And just as Cleisthenes found divine and heroic patrons for his new tribes and demes,(1466) so would a Roman college naturally place itself under the protection of one of the great names of the Roman pantheon. Sometimes, no doubt, there may not have been much sincerity in this conformity to ancient pieties. But do we need to remind ourselves how long a life the form of ancient pieties may have, even when the faith which gave birth to them has become dim and faint?