There is no single Roman funeral service to describe, because the funus was a chain of obligations that ran from the moment of death to a feast nine days later, and each link had its own name. The dying person was called by name, a practice the sources describe as the conclamatio. The body was washed, anointed and dressed, in the case of a magistrate in the robes of the highest office he had held, and laid out in the atrium with the feet pointing toward the door. A coin was commonly placed with the body. The house was hung with cypress or pine so that anyone approaching would know not to enter unprepared.
The procession followed. Roman law kept the dead outside the city, so every funeral involved a journey out through a gate to the roadside tombs, which is why the approaches to Rome were lined with them. Ordinary funerals went at night and quietly. Public ones went by day, with musicians, torches and hired women to lament.
The disposal itself could be cremation on a pyre, with the ashes collected into an urn, or burial. Both were in use throughout, and the balance shifted from burning toward inhumation over the first three centuries of the empire, a change visible in the archaeology long before any text explains it. The household remained in a state that required attention until the rites were finished, and the nine day period that closed them, the novemdiale, ended with a meal at the tomb which included the dead as a participant.