The 2nd century grave marker of a Roman naval soldier found in a New Orleans back yard has been repatriated to Italy. The inscribed marble slab was officially returned to Italy in a ceremony in Rome on Wednesday, April 29th. Other artifacts, including a large Etruscan urn from the 7th century B.C., Greek pottery, and Egyptian statuary, were repatriated at the same ceremony.
Tulane University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband Aaron Lorenz found the stone last year while doing yard work at their historic shotgun house in New Orlean’s Carrolton neighborhood. They reached out to archaeologists and Latin experts, including Tulane University classical studies professor Susann Lusnia, to research its history and translate the inscription. The text identified the deceased as Sextus Congenius Verus, soldier of the fleet of Misenum, an inscription matching one recorded as missing from the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia after World War II.
Lusnia traveled to Civitavecchia in person to investigate the mystery of how this slab went from its find site, to the local museum, then across an ocean to a New Orleans back yard. The previous homeowner, reading the story of the find in the press, solved the last part of the mystery — her grandfather had served in Italy during World War II, married an Italian woman and brought her home to New Orleans. Presumably the slab came with them.
Santoro, Lusnia, other experts and cultural heritage organizations worked together with the Civitavecchia museum on how best to get the grave marker back to the museum. Due to the complexities inherent in the repatriation process, they decided to bring in the FBI’s Art Crime Team. They took custody of the funerary marker in November of last year while the FBI in Rome coordinated the return of the slab and a number of other significant ancient artifacts with Italian authorities.
Professor Susann Lusnia:
“It is especially gratifying to know that this object will soon be home in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. I think that those of us in New Orleans who experienced Hurricane Katrina understand the joy that accompanies the return of things that we thought were lost forever.”
“Cultural heritage is worth protecting … Every object returned builds trust and international cooperation, which I think is especially important now,” she added.
As a soldier of the fleet of Misenum, Sextus could have met the author and commander Pliny the Elder, who was in charge of the ‘classis praetoria Misenensis’, i.e. the fleet, but I am unable to tell, if the living Verus actually did.
Pliny had participated in a campaign against the Chatti in 50AD and -unlike current personnel- spent the rest of his service at Castra Vetera, i.e. in Xanten. He even wrote a 20-volume work on the ‘Roman Wars in Germany’ (which indeed seems ‘lost forever’).
Later, he spent time in Africa and Spain, until he was finally sent to Misenum, where he died in 79AD during a rescue attempt in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius ‘across the Gulf of Naples’ (cf. the ‘epistulae’/ ‘letters’ by the nephew Pliny the Younger).
In his ‘Natural History’ –so to speak ‘across the ocean’- and to demonstrate its vastness, the elder Pliny wrote about what he understood as ‘Indians’, who, while on a trading mission (‘commercii causa navigantes’), had been washed ashore in Germany 🚣️
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“…Quinto Metello Celeri, Afrani in consulatu collegae, sed tum Galliae proconsuli, Indos a rege Sueborum dono datos, qui ex India commercii causa navigantes tempestatibus essent in Germaniam abrepti. sic maria circumfusa undique dividuo globo partem orbis auferunt nobis, nec inde huc ne hinc illo pervio tractu…”