Wouldn't it be interesting if they found Trajan Decius like they found Richard III of England?

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Is their evidence that he was buried? Lost in swamp is not a death conducive to formal burial. More modern people value recovery of remains. Augustus valued recovery of the standards lost by Varus. Many Romans cremated. Who buried Decius?

 

That was a pretty interesting read. I just passed through Trajan Decius on "The History of Rome" podcast a few days ago. I also picked up my first Trajan Decius last week at the Baltimore coin show

Trajan Decius
AR Antoninianus
Obverse: IMP TRAIANVS DECIVS AVG, radiate, draped & cuirassed bust right
Reverse: ADVENTVS AVG, emperor on horseback left with raised hand & scepter

 

It is! I'm getting near the end though and not sure what I will do next.

 

@lordmarcovan I've listened to most of Dan Carlin's stuff. That's what got me hooked on podcasts. I went from him over to History of Rome. Perhaps I will check out the History of Greece one since I don't know too much about ancient Greece. Looks to be pretty long, 100 episodes at around an hour a piece. Should be interesting.

 

The corpse was most likely looted in the battlefield and buried in a rush. I really doubt you're going to find a corpse with gold crown or diamonds that can be identified as a dead emperor.

 

My assumption would be that he was cremated in Roman fashion, but who knows. Interesting...

 

I agree. Finding relics from a specific documented battle from history would be incredible, just like the finds from the site of poor old Varus' demise some years back.

 

It would be great if they could find the site of the battle. It would be like the find at the Harzhorn and the site of the hillside battle between Maximinus Thrax and the Germans. My guess is TD was cremated but if not, perhaps he was preserved in a boggy swamp because of the low oxygen conditions. Don't know what kind of grave goods would be therein.

 

If Trajan Decius drowned in a swamp there is a small chance his body changed into a bog body, like the 4th Century BC Tollund man found in a swamp in Denmark. Thousands of bog bodies were found all over Europe dating from 8000 BC untill soldiers of WW2.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body

 

Zosimus described this history in a very interesting way. Decius would first have completely defeated two groups of Goths. A third group came from the swamp. Trebonianus gallus advised Decius to approach them in the swamp. But Decius and his army sank into the mud. and then they were all killed. It would be interesting if they could discover whether this description of the battle is correct.

 

This is a very interesting topic! I am all in when the archeologists try to find past emperors burial sites. As for Richard III I watched the documentary it was one of the most fascinating documentaries I ever watched and I recommend everyone to watch this. The way they proved it was him was by Genetic analysis and they were lucky enough they found one and only one single descendants of him living in UK. It was a great detective work was done for this. However, I doubt this can be done for kings like TD for few reasons. Even if they find the burial and skeleton, To prove it was TD and not a soldier or general died in battle, They would need to extract a healthy DNA and then have somehow the descendants tree that can be traced to a living person today in order to match the DNA and come to solid conclusion this is very remote possibility IMO.

But on the other side, I would be much more fascinated if they put some effort to find the body and burial site of Genghis Khan . He was much more iconic person and his time line is not as far back as TD so it would have much higher possibility to achieve.