How a 2,000-year-old Roman gravestone ended up in a New Orleans backyard

The gravestone is part of a larger set of inscriptions documenting the lives of Roman sailors recruited across the empire.

In March, anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband were clearing vines in their backyard when they unearthed a marble slab with a Latin inscription. At first, it seemed like an odd tombstone out of place in Louisiana soil. It turned out to be a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman gravestone belonging to Sextus Congenius Verus, a sailor and soldier who lived in the second century, the New York Times reported.

A Roman life inscribed

Experts at Tulane University confirmed the inscription. It stated that Verus had served in the Roman military for 22 years and died at age 42. His heirs commissioned the marker to preserve his memory. Originally found in 1864 in a Roman necropolis at Civitavecchia, Italy, the slab was once part of a museum collection that was destroyed during World War II. After that, the trail went cold.

From Italy to Louisiana

How the gravestone reached New Orleans puzzled scholars. The US Preservation Resource Center revealed this week that a local woman had placed it in the yard 21 years ago. She said her grandfather, a US soldier stationed in Italy during World War II, brought it back and kept it in the family. The piece eventually ended up outdoors, hidden under plants until the recent discovery.

Cultural significance and repatriation

The gravestone is part of a larger set of inscriptions documenting the lives of Roman sailors recruited across the empire. Italian museum officials hope it will be returned and displayed alongside similar pieces. Joint efforts by the FBI and Italy’s Carabinieri cultural heritage unit may determine whether the slab is repatriated. For now, it has reignited debate over wartime “souvenirs” and the journey of cultural artifacts.

Memory across centuries

Roman funerary traditions emphasised remembrance as a form of immortality. Scholars note that Verus’s name, carved nearly 2,000 years ago, now resonates in an entirely new context. By surfacing in a Louisiana backyard, his epitaph has extended its reach far beyond what his heirs could have imagined, bridging worlds across continents and millennia.