A 1,900-year-old Roman gravestone shows up in a Louisiana backyard, and no one can quite solve the mystery of how it got there.
But for years, that’s exactly where a 1,900-year-old marble Roman tombstone quietly lay, all but forgotten and half-swallowed by weeds. Per the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, the story finally took off in spring 2025, when Tulane anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, started cleaning up the backyard around their old Carrollton house in New Orleans. That fateful day in April 2025, Santoro and Lorenz were just trying to spruce up their backyard when they dug up this odd, Latin-inscribed marker. The inscription says he was part of the Bessi, an ancient Thracian tribe, and served for 22 years in the Roman navy, even naming the warship he served on: Asclepius. For nearly 80 years, no one knew where it was.
At first glance, it just looked like another chunk of old stone, but a closer look revealed the unmistakable lines of Latin carved into its face. The museum was basically wiped out, with its treasures either destroyed, scattered, or lost.
Like many Roman memorials, the inscription opens with a formula for honoring the “spirits of the dead” and closes by noting that Verus had earned this tribute. It’s not usual to expect to find a piece of ancient Rome lurking in your backyard, especially in the middle of New Orleans. What nobody knew, until recently, was that this slab had vanished from an Italian museum sometime during the chaotic years of World War II, and then somehow, by twists and turns no one has truly mapped, it ended up beneath Louisiana grass. they noticed the mysterious stone While hacking through the weeds. The Latin inscription immediately set Santoro’s historian senses tingling: maybe they were standing above some old graveyard? Instead, archaeologists soon realized this stone belonged to a Roman sailor, had survived a destroyed Italian museum, and then made a long, strange trip across the Atlantic…for reasons nobody has fully figured out. So far, they’ve at least managed to bring some order to the mystery; the stone has been shipped home to Italy, where it’s about to go on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. Still, a juicy question lingers: who brought this ancient soldier’s grave all the way to a humble Louisiana backyard? Instead of trying to puzzle it out themselves, they called in D. Ryan Gray, an archaeologist from the University of New Orleans. Gray recognized the significance of the engraving and reached out to a network of experts, including Tulane’s Susann Lusnia and Harald Stadler from Innsbruck, Austria. Lusnia spotted the telltale style and language right away: this was a genuine Roman funerary stone. She started poking around online epigraphic databases, feeding in words from the inscription. Suddenly, the search produced a result; this very gravestone had already been studied by scholars. And not just that, it was officially listed as missing. The Latin on the gravestone tells us about a man named Sextus Congenius Verus. He was a Roman sailor, serving with the Praetorian Fleet in the Bay of Naples at Misenum. Two men called Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, apparently his heirs or close friends, paid for the tombstone. For archaeologists, these few lines are priceless: a fragmentary biography etched into stone, giving us a glimpse of a Roman soldier’s journey from distant Thrace to the shadow of Vesuvius. Tracking the gravestone’s past leads us to Civitavecchia, a port city northwest of Rome, where it first emerged in the 19th century. It went on display in what’s now the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. But during World War II, the city and its museum suffered devastating bombing raids by Allied forces. When it reopened decades later, many pieces, including Verus’s gravestone, were simply gone. Then, out of nowhere, it turns up beneath some Louisiana weeds, which seems like an incredible leap of distance, time, and improbability.
He married Erin’s grandmother, Adele, in Italy in 1946, and when they eventually settled in New Orleans, the stone and a few other curios came with them. Just as the questions started to pile up, researchers found a clue in the house’s ownership history. She’d gotten it from her grandparents, thinking it was a decorative hunk of marble. It turns out her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr., served in Italy during World War II. But the trail goes cold here: the family never knew exactly where or how they got the tombstone. It’s possible Paddock brought it home himself, but there’s no hard evidence. It could’ve entered the black market or changed hands through antique dealers. Despite the family connection, exactly who tore Verus’s gravestone from Italy and brought it across the Atlantic remains a mystery that’s probably never going to be solved. For the archaeological world, what’s truly awe-inspiring here isn’t just the endurance of a Roman tombstone; it’s the way a simple moment of curiosity, weeding a backyard in New Orleans, was enough to bring a missing piece of history back to its rightful place. Sometimes, all it takes is paying attention, and the past can find its way home. Looking for trusted parenting advice? Follow TOI Parenting Circle on Instagram for expert guidance, relatable stories, and practical tips delivered every day.
Erin Scott O’Brien, who’d lived there before Santoro and Lorenz, saw news coverage and immediately recognized the stone as something she’d put in the backyard years earlier.
The homecoming capped off in April 2026, when the gravestone became one of over 300 treasured items ceremoniously given back to Italy in Rome. Now, according to Tulane University, the stone is being readied for its next chapter: on public display at the freshly renovated Civitavecchia museum, reopening in September 2026. So, nearly two millennia after Sextus Congenius Verus was honored with a slab of marble, and decades after bombs and neglect lost his memory, his name will again be seen where it was always meant to be.
After experts nailed down the stone’s identity, Santoro and her colleagues knew what needed to happen next: it had to go back home. The handoff went to the FBI’s Art Crime Team, which worked with Italian officials to ensure the ancient artifact’s safe return.