The Romans prohibited burning or burying in the city, both from a sacred
and civil consideration, that the priests might not be contaminated by
touching a dead body, and that houses might not be endangered by the
frequency of funeral fires.

The custom of burning the dead had its foundation laid deep in nature:
an anxious fondness to preserve the great and good, the dear friend and
the near relative, was the sole motive that prevailed in the institution
of this solemnity. "That seems to me," says Cicero, "to have been the
most ancient kind of burial, which, according to Xenophon, was used by
Cyrus. For the body is returned to the earth, and so placed as to be
covered with the veil of its mother." Pliny also agrees with Cicero upon
this point, and says the custom of burial preceded that of burning among
the Romans. According to Monfauçon, the custom of burning entirely
ceased at Rome about the time of Theodorius the younger. When cremation
ceased on the introduction of Christianity, the believing Romans,
together with the Romanized and converted Britons, would necessarily, as
it is observed by Mr. Grough, "betake themselves to the use of
sarcophagi (or coffins,) and probably of various kinds, stone, marble,
lead," &c. They would likewise now first place the body in a position
due east and west, and thus bestow an unequivocal mark of distinction
between the funeral deposit of the earliest Roman inhabitants of this
island, and their Christian successors. The usual places of interment
were in fields or gardens,[4] near the highway, to be conspicuous, and
to remind the passengers how transient everything is, that wears the
garb of mortality. By this means, also, they saved the best part of
their land:

--Experiar quid concedatur in illos