Imagĭnes
The Roman portrait-masks of deceased members of a family; they were made of wax and painted, and probably fastened to the busts. They were kept in small wooden shrines let into the inner walls of the atrium. Inscriptions under the shrines recorded the names, merits, and exploits of the persons they referred to. The images were arranged and connected with one another by means of coloured lines, in such a way as to exhibit the pedigree (stemma) of the family. On festal days the shrines were opened, and the busts crowned with bayleaves. These portrait-masks must have been originally used for covering the faces of the dead, like the light metal masks of Phœnicia, Carthage, and Mycenae. (See Persona.) At family funerals, there were persons specially appointed to walk in procession before the body, wearing the masks of the deceased members of the family, and clothed in the insignia of the rank which they had held when alive. The right (ius imaginum) of having these ancestral images carried in procession was one of the privileges of the nobility, and distinguished the nobilis from the novus homo. If a person died not being in the possession of full civic rights, his image could not be exhibited, as in the case of Brutus and Cassius (Polyb. vi. 53; Pliny , Pliny H. N. xxxv. 2.6, 7; Tac. Ann. iii. 76; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, book iii. chap. xiii.).