The Kaiseraugst Silver Treasure

Late in 1961 a mechanical digger was clearing ground for a sports field inside the walls of the late Roman fort at Kaiseraugst, on the Rhine east of Basel. Its bucket tore through a buried hoard of silver and scattered the pieces in the spoil. The driver noticed a metal disc and took it for a discarded shaving bowl. Snow then covered the site, and for weeks nobody realised what was lying there.

Early in 1962 the treasure resurfaced piece by piece. A schoolboy picked up a plate, showed it to his teacher, was told to throw it away, and did so; it was the Ariadne tray, one of the finest pieces. A visitor took home a battered dish because he liked the picture in the middle: the Achilles dish. The landlady of the nearby inn gathered five platters, washed them and stored them in her kitchen. Only when an amateur collector found a lid scratched with the name of a Roman and asked for an expert did the archaeologist Rudolf Laur-Belart take charge, and the landlady's note of a car number plate helped trace the rest.

The recovered treasure was bigger than anyone expected. Then in 1995 a notary contacted the archaeologists: the family of a deceased client wished to sell 18 more pieces, six platters, six plates and six bowls weighing about 22 kg, on condition that the previous holder stayed anonymous. With them the total reached 270 objects and 58 kg of silver, the largest late Roman silver treasure known. Impressions on one tray show that at least one big platter is still missing.

The star is the octagonal Achilles dish, whose rim and centre tell the hero's youth in eleven scenes, from his dipping in the Styx to his unmasking on Skyros. A Greek inscription underneath names its maker, Pausylypos of Thessalonica, one of very few Roman silversmiths known by name. Beside it are the Ariadne tray with Dionysus and a panther, a great niello plate showing a seaside villa with fishing cupids, and a plate issued by the emperor Constans for his tenth jubilee in 342 or 343.

Many pieces were imperial gifts. Emperors handed out silver plate, medallions and ingots to officers and officials on anniversaries and accessions to buy loyalty. The coins and medallions honour the sons of Constantine, and two ingots carry the stamp of Magnentius, who seized power in the West in 350 and killed Constans. A plate inscribed with the name Romulus has led to speculation that the owner was Magnentius' general of that name, killed at the battle of Mursa in 351, though it proves only that a Romulus once owned that plate.

Augusta Raurica reckons the silver was worth a year's pay for 230 legionaries. It was probably buried around 351, amid civil war and Alamannic raids across the Rhine; the fort itself was attacked soon afterwards. Its owners, one or perhaps two senior officers, never returned to dig it up.