empire

Archaeologists working at a Croatian university campus have identified seven skeletons discovered in an ancient well as Roman soldiers who met violent deaths nearly 1,700 years ago. The discovery, published in PLOS ONE, offers unprecedented insights into the Crisis of the Third Century and reveals that the Roman Empire recruited warriors from across its vast territories. The soldiers likely perished during the Battle of Mursa in 260 AD, one of the bloodiest conflicts in the empire's turbulent history, when Emperor Gallienus fought against the usurper Ingenuus in what is now Osijek, Croatia. The unusual burial site came to light in 2011 during routine excavations ahead of construction work at Josip Juraj Strossmayer University. Workers uncovered several ancient wells, one of