ROME, ITALY—Live Science reports that two 2,400-year-old tombs have been uncovered in the Parco delle Acacie near Via Pietralata in northeastern Rome. One tomb contained a stone sarcophagus and three cremation urns, while the other held the remains of a man’s skeleton. The tombs were found in a cemetery near a shrine thought to have been dedicated to the deified Greek hero Hercules, a roadway leading to the shrine, and two monumental basins that may have been used in ceremonies at the site about 100 years after the tombs were built. Bronze coins at the shrine site suggest it was used between the fifth or fourth centuries B.C. and the first century A.D. To read about a Roman-era marble statue of Hercules excavated in the ancient Greek city of Philippi, go to "A Young Hercules."
