Imagines

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Imagines (meaning literally, the image or face) were Roman funerary masks, thought to have been made of wax, that were hung after the person's death, in the atrium of their ancestral home providing they had held curule office in the Roman state. This meant that they had to have been a censor, consul, praetor or curule aedile (later, also plebeian aedile).

The use of these masks was mostly ornamental, as they were placed in the most public room of the house, with small inscriptions beneath them (tituli) for most of the time. Here they would be viewed by all the clientia of the pater familias as the Roman house, especially the atrium and the tablinum was a semi-public place.

The masks also played a role in Roman funeral processions when they would be worn by hired actors and would parade before the dead man.

There has been much discussion of the material make up of the masks. The most likely solution is that they were made of wax, possibly moulded to the faces of the dead themselves, or to busts of them, since if you entered office you would have been granted this at public expense.