Roman Soldiers Unearthed in Croatia Reveal Forgotten Battle!
Archaeologists in eastern Croatia have uncovered a chilling reminder of the Roman Empire’s violent past: a mass grave hidden at the bottom of an ancient well. The site, found in 2011 during the construction of a university building in Osijek (once the Roman city of Mursa), has now been fully analysed and published in PLOS ONE. The findings shed new light on one of Rome’s bloodiest and least remembered civil wars.
Inside the two-metre-wide, three-metre-deep well lay the skeletal remains of seven men, likely Roman soldiers, stacked haphazardly, some even thrown in headfirst. Their careless burial suggests a hurried disposal rather than a formal interment. Radiocarbon dating places the event in the latter half of the third century CE, confirmed by a coin minted in 251 CE found among the remains.
Photo Credit: M. Novak et al., PloS One (2025); CC BY 4.0
The condition of the bodies indicates that they were dumped shortly after death, still partly covered in flesh, evidence of a sudden, violent event.
All seven were adult men, four young and three middle-aged, who had clearly lived demanding physical lives. They stood tall for their time, averaging around 172.5 cm, and displayed bone stress markers consistent with professional soldiers.
Researchers believe the men died during the Battle of Mursa in 260 CE, when Emperor Gallienus crushed the forces of the usurper Ingenuus amid the political chaos of the Crisis of the Third Century.
Bioanthropological analysis revealed the sheer savagery of their final moments. Several skulls bore healed wounds from previous battles, while others showed fresh, fatal injuries, a punctured sternum from a spear or arrow, sword cuts, broken teeth, and stab wounds to the ribs and hips. The direction and variety of the trauma point to close-quarter combat and the chaos of a battlefield rout.
Photo Credit: M. Novak et al., PloS One (2025); CC BY 4.0
After death, the men were stripped of their armour and possessions before being tossed into the well, likely by victors eager to erase the evidence of the conflict.
All seven skeletons displayed bone changes on the ribs associated with lung infections, hinting at chronic respiratory illness such as pneumonia, a common ailment among soldiers exposed to cold, damp, and exhausting conditions.
Isotopic testing revealed they shared almost identical diets, rich in grains such as wheat and millet, with small amounts of meat, typical of Roman military rations, which relied heavily on bread, salted meat, oil, and wine.
DNA analysis painted an even broader picture of the late Roman army’s diversity. The men hailed from a variety of ancestral backgrounds, northern and central Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Black Sea region. One even showed potential Sarmatian ancestry, evidence of Rome’s widespread recruitment of foreign auxiliaries.
This genetic mix mirrors historical accounts of the empire’s later armies: multicultural, multi-ethnic, and united under the banner of Rome, at least until civil war tore them apart.
Historical sources tell us that Emperor Gallienus showed no mercy to Ingenuus’s defeated soldiers. The archaeological evidence aligns perfectly with these accounts, suggesting the seven men may have been executed after the battle, or simply abandoned where they fell.
Every clue, from the coin and the trauma to the hurried burial, points to the same tragic conclusion: these were soldiers caught up in one of Rome’s many internal conflicts, their lives cut short in a struggle for imperial power.
Nearly 1,800 years later, their rediscovery offers a haunting yet human glimpse into the chaos of the third century, a time when even the might of Rome was tearing itself apart from within.