Joanna has been travelling…
Last week I was in Rome and the final visit of the trip was to Ostia Antica which, for centuries, was the port through which much of Rome’s supplies of grain, oil and wild beasts flowed. Bread and Circuses, remember? Romans got their regular dole of bread, made from the vast supplies of grain from North Africa. The wild beasts were part of the circuses that kept them entertained and—so the emperors hoped—quiescent.
The last thing emperors needed was any kind of revolt from the populace. Emperors had enough problems keeping the Legions and the Praetorian Guard happy. (I haven’t added up how many emperors were assassinated by their own Praetorian Guard, but it’s a fair few.)
Excavations at Ostia Antica
There’s a lot of archaeological work going on at Ostia Antica. The site is huge. Reminiscent of Pompeii without the crowds of tourists. And definitely worth a visit.
The Tiber had a problem with silt. Partly because of that, and partly because of sand, Ostia is now several kilometres from the sea. However, the silt was helpful in that it preserved many of the buildings of the city of Ostia and allows them now to be excavated. Apparently, about two-thirds of the site remains to be excavated so there may be exciting finds to come.
In the imperial period, Ostia wasn’t felt to be big enough, or safe enough, to be the main port of Rome and so the Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54) had a new harbour built at Portus, on the northern mouth of the Tiber. (Ostia is on the southern mouth of the river.) Half a century later, the Emperor Trajan had a new, safer Portus harbour constructed further inland. Portus took some trade from Ostia but the city continued to flourish until well into the imperial period. Ostia had about 100,000 inhabitants in the second and third centuries AD.
And with all those people, it had the amenities that a large Roman city required.
What does a Roman City have to have?
Well, to start with, temples, particularly temples to the imperial cult. As our tour leader kept repeating, a Roman citizen had to (a) pay his taxes and (b) tip his hat to the imperial cult.
And then there would be baths, essential to the Roman way of life, and entertainment spaces like a theatre. There had to be houses and apartments where people could live, of course. Plus, in a busy port like Ostia, there had to be places for business to be conducted.
The theatre is still there, largely intact and, as you can see, it was very large, holding thousands of spectators. In its heyday, it would have been very grand as the reconstruction shows.
Behind the back wall of the theatre, in the reconstruction, you can see a large square with a temple in the centre. That was where business was conducted. And like much else in Ostia, it is vast.
What did Ostia businesses deal in?
This is a view along part of one side of that huge square. The wall in the background is the side wall of the theatre. Each of those column bases shows where an individual shop or business front stood. And many of them have elaborate mosaics depicting their business.
For example, what do you think this business did? (I’ve turned the image upside-down so it’s easier to see.)
Just for reference, when the Colosseum was finally opened by the Emperor Titus in 80 AD, the games went on for 100 days. During those games, at least 5,000 wild beasts were put to death to keep the people of Rome entertained.
Someone had to import them, didn’t they?
Not just wild beasts?
Here are some more of those business mosaics. They tell us quite a lot about what went on. This man was in the shipping business. By the way, the two things sticking out into the sea are not oars, but rudders.
This man was in a different kind of shipping business. If you look closely, you’ll see that the ship on the right is a warship, with a ram. And the male figure is boarding the merchant ship. So this person was in the business of piracy maybe? Or perhaps he built warships?
This one includes more ships and also a lighthouse, a pharos. It’s not clear whether there was a pharos at Ostia though there may have been. I believe there was one at Portus, further north. And is that a dolphin? Or maybe even a whale?
Obviously, Ostia merchants also dealt in the basics of life, like grain from Africa and oil and wine from Spain as I described in a previous blog. There would also have been the stinky but much prized fish sauce, garum, much of which came from Spain too. Perhaps this merchant dealt in fish and garum?
Romans have to be clean
Ostia had several sets of public and private baths. The largest were the Forum baths but perhaps the most spectacular for modern tourists are the Baths of Neptune, near the entrance to Ostia. Visitors can see fantastic mosaics there.
You can see from the reconstruction above how luxurious the building was. Here are some of the mosaics that visitors can still see.
The mosaic on the left shows Neptune himself, driving a 4-horse (sea-horse!) chariot. The mosaic on the right shows his wife, Amphitrite, riding a sea-horse.
The forum baths, however, preserve one of those spectacles that never fails to amuse modern tourists: the communal latrine. At the forum baths, they had a 20-seater! Nowadays it looks like this:
And here is the information board which tells visitors about who used the latrine and how luxurious it was: complete with hand basins and revolving doors. I love the expressions on the faces of the men in the reconstruction.
No, there are no women shown. We were told that women did use the baths (and presumably also the latrine?) but at different times from the men. And the water in the baths was changed once a day, in the morning. I wonder which sex got to visit the baths when the water was fresh and clean? Probably no prizes for guessing on that one.
It’s a fascinating site – been there twice – and like you, took loads of pix of the mosaic “door mats”
Love the idea of “mosaic doormats” which is exactly how they seemed. It must have been a bustling and fascinating place back in the early imperial period. Tends to bring Falco to life a bit.
Utterly fascinating. The “doormats” are brilliant. I note the absence of brothels in this account, however. Have the archaeologists not got to the red light district yet, perhaps?
Not sure about brothels, Sophie. There may have been some but, if so, they weren’t pointed out to us. But, then again, we didn’t have all that long at Ostia Antica and the site is vast. If I’d thought about it, I’d have asked but, being a bit tired after an 8-day route march, my brain didn’t spark on the subject.