Roman Centurion Tombstone Discovered in Bulgaria
Tomb plate belonging to a centurion of the First Italic Legion discovered at Nove.
Rescue excavations in the western necropolis of the Roman military camp at Nove, near Svishtov, have brought to light a fragment of a tomb plate belonging to a centurion of the First Italic Legion (Legio I Italica).
Archaeologists from the Municipal Institute in Svishtov and the Regional Museum of History in Veliko Tarnovo quickly initiated emergency investigations. The site proved to contain five burial structures, including two limestone cyst graves—rectangular chambers constructed from stone slabs—alongside a brick-and-stone walled grave, a simple grave pit, and a stepped pit showing evidence of burning.
The most significant find emerged from one of the cyst graves, where a partially preserved tombstone of the centurion Gaius Valerius Verecundus had been reused as building material. His epitaph, composed in verse, poignantly records that he had been “heavily pressed by fate.” The reuse of funerary monuments in later burials suggests that older graves in the necropolis had already been dismantled in antiquity.
Other inscribed monuments were incorporated into the same structure. Among them was the tombstone of Marcus Marius Patro, a veteran of the First Italian Legion originally from Iconium in Asia Minor, today’s Konya in Turkey. A roof slab was fashioned from a stela bearing the complete epitaph of Aelia Basilia, described as a “most virtuous sister” (soror pientissima). The monument had been erected by her brother, Publius Aelius Bassus, himself a veteran and beneficiarius of the legion.
The second cyst grave yielded comparable evidence of reuse. Its eastern wall consisted almost entirely of the well-preserved tombstone of Gaius Alpinius Secundus, son of Gaius, from Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium—modern Cologne, Germany—and a soldier of the Eleventh Legion Claudia. Another roof slab carried part of an epitaph commemorating a veteran who had served 25 years and died at the age of 60.
Three of the tombstones feature decorative wreaths, ivy leaves, and branches, while the monument to Marcus Marius Patro includes carved signa, or military standards, underscoring the martial identity of the deceased.
All five graves had been looted in antiquity or modern times, leaving only sparse finds: a bone needle, a spindle fragment, and two bronze fibulae. Mixed skeletal remains recovered from the graves will undergo anthropological analysis, while specialists continue detailed study of the Latin inscriptions to shed further light on the lives commemorated in stone.
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