Married couple reunited - after 2000 years apart

Via dei Sepolcri, Pompeii, where the fragments were first found

Two Classics experts have reunited a married couple - after 2000 years apart.

Lucius Catilius Pamphilus lived in Pompeii and had a loving funerary inscription made for his wife Servilia.

However, it was smashed to pieces and buried under ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted over the Roman city in AD79.

Now, a University of Reading duo have re-examined the fragments and discovered for the first time that the two names belong together.

The inscription now reads: 'Lucius Caltilius Pamphilus, freedman of Lucius, member of the Collinian tribe, for his wife Servilia, in a loving spirit.'

Excavation of the pieces had begun back in 1813, though scholars had originally recorded them as separate fragments.

Virginia Campbell, whose PhD thesis is on the tombs of Pompeii , and Dr Peter Kruschwitz, an expert in Latin inscriptions, discovered that the pieces are actually from the same inscription.

Vesuvius killed all 20,000 Pompeii inhabitants

Dr Kruschwitz said: "Amazingly the inscription was fragmented in such a way that all that was missing from the first part was the name of the wife.

"So identifying these as parts of the same inscription literally re-united the couple."

He added: "Dealing with fragmentary Latin inscriptions is often like playing with a giant jigsaw puzzle.

"You have ten pieces of what used to be a two-thousand pieces game.

"If you manage to discover adjacent pieces and then a beautiful little vignette emerges, this is among the most fulfilling moments for anyone dealing with ancient inscriptions.

"This case, of course, is even more beautiful than others, because it literally re-unites two human beings who once were a loving couple almost two thousand years ago."

Lucius and Servilia are now happily side by side in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.