pits, named in the 1st century BC as puticuli ("little pits"), possible remnants of ancient stone-quarrying that sometimes served as dumps for corpses of the destitute, animal bones and household litter. The hill had once been the site of an ancient, aristocratic necropolis, first used around the 9th century BC, then submerged by the city's growth. Despite this ancient usage, the Esquilline seems not to have been a locus religiosus, but a locus publicus - an ordinary, public place, though notoriously unpleasant and malodorous. Towards the end of the Republic an area just outside the Esquiline Gate was used as a dump for the bodies of executed criminals and crucified slaves. The former were simply left there, or "dragged with the hook" from elsewhere by the undertaker's distinctively red-clad employees for disposal by birds and beasts. The bodies of slaves were usually left to rot on their crosses. The upper echelons of libitinarii (dissignatores, who hosted, organised and led funeral rites) wore distinctive black clothing, including a black hat. They were considered less polluted, and less polluting, than those who came into direct contact with corpses. Despite the public announcement of public executions, and public attendance at the same, the mere sight of a red-clad corpse-carrier or the body he dragged or carried was thought a pollution to be avoided, especially by priests, in particular by priests of Jupiter. Corpse-carriers going about their business were therefore obliged to ring a bell to warn of their approach. A fee was payable for death certification at the offices of the Esquilline undertakers – a sort of "death tax". It funded the state's contribution to several festivals, including elements of the Parentalia and sacred games such as the Ludi Apollinares and Ludi Plebeii. The profession of undertaker was simultaneously "purifying and inherently sordid"; a necessary and ignoble trade, whose practitioners profited from blood and death. For contractors, it was almost certainly very profitable. Burial societies and burial grants Burial societies were among the very few privately funded and privately organised associations accepted by Rome's civil authorities, who otherwise tended to suspect any private organisation of conspiracy against the status quo. The affluent town of Lanuvium hosted a burial society called "worshippers of Diana and Antinous", founded in 133 AD and headed, supervised and financially underwritten by a patron, a wealthy local civil magistrate. The organisation's charter guaranteed funeral rites and burial, or at