The tomb of Numerius Agrestinus, prefect of Roman Hispania and soldier of the Emperor Augustus during the Cantabrian Wars (29-19 BC), was found in Pompeii during restoration work being carried out on the San Paolino building, the new home of the library of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. The inscription on the tomb details that Agrestinus was a military man, duumvir (holder of the highest office in ancient Rome) and prefect of the Autrigones. This was a Celtiberian tribe from the north of the Iberian Peninsula that was dominated and integrated into the Roman Empire; hence the gesture of high-ranking public officials to dedicate a tomb to him on public land in Pompeii in the 1st century, a few decades before the eruption.
“It is a demonstration of the power network that connected the elites of the empire, whose members were asked to commit themselves in conflict zones, with the promise of economic rewards but above all of social prestige in the community of residence,” explains the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, in a press release. The excavation has already reached both ends of the tomb, which is shaped like a semicircle and dates back to a type of burial known in Pompeii: the schoolconsisting of a tuff hemicycle, decorated at the ends with lion’s paws.
The same Agrestinus appears in another funerary inscription from Pompeii, in the necropolis of Porta Nocera. This is a cylindrical monument created by his wife, Veia Barchilla, for her and her husband, a building that predates the recently discovered tomb, with which the council of decurions decided to honour the politician and military man. The inscription tells that he chose the Pompeian lands as his “good retirement”. “It is a position that has not been attested until now and that helps, on a historical level, to better understand the organisation of Roman power in a phase of transition towards the imperial model”, comments Zuchtriegel.
“With this discovery, the Pompeii site is confirmed as a place of prime importance for expanding our knowledge and better understanding the society of the time. That is why I wanted the latest Budget Law to include resources for a national campaign to expand excavations in various archaeological parks. In Pompeii, in particular, there are currently several excavations taking place, as never before in recent decades,” said Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. He made special mention of the excavations in Civita Giuliana, an area spared from “the illegal activity of tomb raiders and recovered thanks to an agreement between the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Torre Annunziata.”
Having held the position of duumvir and being honoured with a funerary monument on public land are expressions of recognition and loyalty, says Sangiuliano. The organisers will create a museum of the monument with a context about the character and his importance in the series of wars that took place between the Roman Empire and the Cantabrian and Asturian tribes in the region of northern Hispania.