“We do not know anything about Seuso”

Classical archaeologist János György Szilágyi interviewed by Eszter Rádai in No. 17, volume LVIII of Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature), 25 April 2014.

“You’re right, we don’t know anything for certain. There is a single concrete footing, the inscription Pelso, which proved that the person for whom the vessel was originally intended as a gift lived somewhere on the northern shore of Lake Balaton in Pannonia. This is the only concrete point that can be verified. Without it, the other objects could have been found anywhere in the empire – and Hungarian researchers express that in their frank moments.” Thus asserts János György Szilágyi, who was in charge of the Collection of Classical Antiquities in the Museum of Fine Arts for four decades prior to 1992. It was he who discovered that the Seuso treasure was connected to Pannonia when he happened to see the hoard in the Getty Museum in California thirty years ago. According to him, in order to fully evaluate it “one should possess the entire treasure or at least have the possibility of researching it”.