Their funerals were as much under the protection of the law, which not only invested the tomb itself with a sacred character, but included in its protection the area in which it stood, and the cella memoriae or chapel connected with it, as those of their heathen fellow-citizens, while the same shield would be thrown over the burial-clubs, which, as we learn from Tertullian 2 Cicero is our authority for the burial of Marius, and for Sulla's being the first member of the Gens Cornelia whose dead body was burnt (De Legg.