Discovered at Lanuvium, the lex collegia salutaris Dianae et Antinoi ("By-laws of the Society of Diana and Antinous") details the cost of joining the society, monthly fees, regulations for the burial of members, and the schedule for the group's meetings and dinners.
Another example at Rome was the College of Aesculapius and Hygia, founded by a wealthy woman in honor of her dead husband.
[2] One of the ways that the Romans made sense of the earliest Christian groups was to think of them as associations of this kind, particularly burial societies, which were permitted even when political conflict or civil unrest caused authorities to ban meetings of other groups; Pliny the Younger identified Christians collectively as a hetaeria.
[3] Edmund Roberts mentioned the European and Burial Society when he visited Cape Town, South Africa in 1833.
He described it as "supporting poor and unfortunate fellow-countrymen, during their illness, and in the event of their death, to cause them to be respectfully interred".