Vatican Museums

The young sub-officer Titus Flavius Iulius, a native of Noricum (corresponding approximately to contemporary Austria), was conscripted at the age of seventeen, assigned to the Ulpius Italicus squadron in the select cavalry (equites singulares, barracked in Rome), who served as the emperor’s escorts and bodyguards. He died at the age of thirty at the grade indicated by the classification of his annual pay: sesquiplicarius (he received 50% above the base figure, a total of 8400 sestertii, calculated in the year 197). In the reliefs (serial subjects which appear in other stele produced in the same marble workshop), he is depicted in a reclining position (at the top) while proposing a toast, and between the two horses he holds by their reins (at the bottom). The tomb, consecrated to the Manes gods¸ was commissioned by two military friends: Titus Aurelius Victorinus, standard-bearing cavalryman, his first heir, and Titus Flavius Florentinus, a simple soldier in the eleventh urban cohort, his second heir.