Gravestone of the standard-bearer Tiberius Iulius Pancuius

Tiberius Iulius Pancuius was a standard-bearer during the first half of the 1st century in the cohors Lusitanorum, a cohort that had originally been de ployed in what is now southern Portugal. Pancuius’s three-part name shows that he had Roman citizenship. The soldier is armed with a mail shirt over a garment whose leather fringes look out from under the short sleeves of the armor. Like the neckerchief it protected the skin from the mail. In his right hand Pancuius holds a standard. In many points the gravestone of Pancuius betrays amateurish stonework. Apparently it was created by a local sculptor. The stone was originally covered with a lime slurry and colorfully painted. Roman graveyards were usually built along the main arteries. The relatives of the dead went to great expense to erect funerary monuments to draw attention to the significance both of the dead person and themselves.