Anyone who has undertaken a significant garden renovation is likely familiar with unearthing fragmented pottery shards and long-concealed statuary ensnarled by verdant growth.
However, for a particular couple, this semblance of archaeological exploration evolved into an authentic discovery.
At first impression, the marble tablet, inscribed with Latin text that included the phrase “spirits of the dead,” could have been mistaken for a commercially produced replica, intended to imbue a garden with a touch of ornamental solemnity.
Yet, for anthropologist Daniella Santoro, residing in a historic New Orleans residence within the Carrollton district alongside her spouse, Aaron Lopez, the artifact – uncovered partially submerged amidst the underbrush – triggered a keen intuition.
Initially, a concern arose that they might have stumbled upon an ancient burial site.
“The fact that it was in Latin truly gave us pause, didn’t it?” Santoro conveyed to the Associated Press.
“I mean, one encounters something of that nature and immediately recognizes its extraordinary character.”
Rather than dismissing this premonition, Santoro sought the counsel of specialists.
Among the academics who meticulously examined the inscription were archaeologist Susann Lusnia from Tulane University and anthropologist D. Ryan Gray of the University of New Orleans, who subsequently disseminated the find among their peers.
It did not take long for the investigating scholars to ascertain the nature of the couple’s discovery.
The Latin inscription commences with the invocation Dis Manibus, signifying “to the spirits of the dead,” a customary dedication found on Roman funerary markers.
Within the rituals of Roman burial practices, Dis Manibus served as a standard invocation directed towards the departed, frequently etched at the apex of gravestones. Countless such inscriptions persist throughout the former Roman Empire.
Further decipherment revealed that the stone served as a memorial to a Roman legionary, a native of Thrace named Sextus Congenius Verus.
Commissioned by his heirs, Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, the funerary marker attests to his demise at the age of 42, following a distinguished military career spanning 22 years – an event that transpired approximately 1,900 years prior to its discovery by Santoro and Lopez in an overgrown garden, thousands of miles from its place of origin.
Remarkably, this was not the initial record of the stone’s existence. In the early twentieth century, it had been cataloged as part of the holdings of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, a coastal city where the grave marker had once been situated within a modest cemetery.
The museum sustained substantial damage during Allied aerial bombardments in 1943 and 1944, resulting in the loss or misplacement of numerous artifacts. Across the European continent, the ravages of wartime bombing and unauthorized appropriation led to the displacement of innumerable cultural treasures, many of which remain unlocated decades onward.
The gravestone was among those subsequently classified as missing. Its precise dimensions, as meticulously recorded by the museum, corresponded precisely with those of the tablet unearthed in Santoro and Lopez’s garden. Its exact measurements, as documented by the museum, matched those of the tablet found in Santoro and Lopez’s garden.
The enigmatic trajectory of the stone’s journey from wartime Italy to a suburban Louisiana setting constitutes an equally compelling narrative.
According to Erin Scott O’Brien, the former proprietor of the Carrollton residence, the tablet had been exhibited within a curio cabinet alongside other family heirlooms in the Gentilly abode of her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr., a serviceman stationed in Italy during World War II.
Paddock Jr. and his wife passed away in the 1980s; upon O’Brien’s relocation to the home in the early 2000s, her mother bestowed the stone upon her.
“We planted a tree and declared it the commencement of our new dwelling. Let’s place it outdoors in our garden,” O’Brien recounted in an interview with Preservation in Print. “I simply perceived it as a decorative piece; I had no inkling of its 2,000-year-old historical significance.”
More than eight decades have elapsed since the museum that once housed the relic suffered devastation from warfare, and the primary individuals involved in this peculiar saga have since departed.
It is highly improbable that the complete account of how Paddock acquired possession of the stone will ever be definitively established. However, perhaps the most significant aspect is its eventual return to its homeland – the empire that Sextus Congenius Verus so steadfastly served.
The FBI’s Art Crime Team is actively engaged in the coordination of its repatriation to the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia.
