GENERAL THEMES, LATE REPUBLIC TO MID-THIRD CENTURY A.D.

Moving on to more strictly historical and archaeological topics, Late Republican Ostia has continued to attract considerable attention.Footnote ⁶ In this field, much food for thought will emerge from the notes on some individual monuments and complexes, but we should deal first, in a unitary way, with the proceedings of a conference held at Ostia in 2002 in memory of John H. D'Arms.Footnote ⁷ The bulk of the conference was devoted to problems in Ostia's history revolving around the figure of the ‘first Gamala’, one of the most important politicians of the Late Republican city.Footnote ⁸

In this context, Fausto Zevi tackled the relations between Cicero, the Ostian élites and Gamala (perhaps related to Cicero's attempts to find a suitable place for his daughter's tomb);Footnote ⁹ elsewhere,Footnote ¹⁰ he revised the chronology of the ‘works of Gamala’, as listed in the well-known inscription CIL XIV, 375. Partly as a result of his dating the walls of Ostia to the time of Cicero, Zevi now suggests that Gamala senior's public career lasted from around 75 to 37 b.c.Footnote ¹¹ and believes, with Meiggs, that the bellum navale financed by this prominent Ostian politician was the war against Sextus Pompey (40–36 b.c.) and not Pompey Magnus’ bellum piraticum.Footnote ¹²

In fact, the cults practised at Ostia, with the problems relating to temples, sanctuaries and spaces used for ritual purposes, are perhaps the most hotly debated and widely studied issue in the past decade of research on the colony. The critical energy expended on this by various scholars (with an intense debate between sometimes very divergent positions) has entailed not only a discussion of the archaeological data, but also — and above all — of religious history and ‘anthropology’. I will briefly survey the contents of the books and articles tackling this issue, whilst numerous observations on individual buildings and problems will find space below, in the section on topography.

Two very ambitious books on religion at Ostia were published in Germany in 2004, by Anna-Katharina RiegerFootnote ¹³ and Dirk Steuernagel respectively.Footnote ¹⁴ The former deals exclusively with our site, the latter with cults in Roman ‘port cities’, three of which are used as case studies and investigated in depth: Ostia, Pozzuoli and Aquileia. Rieger also selects three case studies from Ostia for detailed analysis: the Quattro Tempietti, the Campo della Magna Mater and the Tempio Rotondo. Subsequent chapters deal with Ostia's other religious areas, albeit in lesser detail. Rieger covers both cults that cannot yet be assigned with confidence to a specific building or place, and sanctuaries that can be identified with certainty from an archaeological point of view.

The parts of Steuernagel's monograph devoted to Ostia take a different approach, avoiding ‘hierarchies’ among the various cultic manifestations and structures, all placed on the same level and studied systematically, following a criterion of rigorous rejection of any identification not based on certain proof.Footnote ¹⁵ In the opening chapters, on divinities and cults that are not strictly ‘Ostian’, the ordering is roughly chronological, but these are followed by thematic treatments of, among other things, ‘city’ gods and local cult traditions, the guild scholae and their temples, and ‘foreign’ religions.

These two books have been discussed in depth in two long reviews (in fact two genuine articles) by Patrizio Pensabene, who dealt with both authors,Footnote ¹⁶ and by Françoise Van Haeperen, who analysed only the former.Footnote ¹⁷ We will return to these critiques in the section on individual sacred complexes below.

In the following year, Van Haeperen published another article on Ostian cults from the perspective of religious relations between Rome and its maritime colony.Footnote ¹⁸ Again, we will examine her views in greater detail when dealing with the issue of cult spaces and specifically ritual aspects. The numerous problems tackled include some that had previously been neglected, such as the theories on the nature of the sacrifice being performed by Claudius in a.d. 48 when he received news of Messalina's marriage to Silius.Footnote ¹⁹

Though limited to the Republican period, Zevi's most recent article on Ostia's cults and sanctuariesFootnote ²⁰ represents — for its length and the range of topics dealt with — the culmination of a corpus of publications that has in the space of a few years significantly changed our perceptions not just of religious life in Ostia, but of the entire public sphere and even the daily life of its inhabitants.Footnote ²¹ Specifically, this article comprehensively revises the sacred topography of the ForumFootnote ²² between about 60–50 b.c. and a.d. 40–50.Footnote ²³ Zevi also focuses on the Quattro Tempietti and above all, in great depth, on the sacred area of Hercules which, in his view, also has important links to the cults of Vulcan and the Dioscuri (see infra).

Many studies have also been devoted to eastern pagan cults.Footnote ²⁴ These include Steuernagel's numerous notes on Egyptian religion,Footnote ²⁵ the aforementioned analysis by Rieger of the rites in the Campo della Magna Mater (see below, in the topographical section), the general re-examination of Mithraism at Ostia by White,Footnote ²⁶ and above all the chapter devoted to the issue of ‘foreign’ cults in the book by Rohde.Footnote ²⁷

ARCHITECTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE AND DECORATIVE MATERIAL

On architectural and residential typologies we should first mention an article by Janet DeLaine,Footnote ²⁸ a masterful analysis of the type of ground-floor residence known as a ‘medianum apartment’ (or, as DeLaine rightly prefers, atrium-hall apartmentFootnote ²⁹ ): this is a fairly luxurious architectural form, very common in Trajanic-Hadrianic Ostia (but unknown in Rome). The general features of medianum residences were already well known and much studied; however DeLaine — referring mainly to the insulae of the Hadrianic Case a Giardino (infra) and particularly the central blocks of this large complex — offers some new and important thoughts on the dimensions of the ground floors (generally fractions of a square actus) and the original connection of some apartments by twos, later separated (were these initially related families?Footnote ³⁰ ). She also records some interesting forerunners of the luxury residential forms typical of late antique Ostia, such as the separate pathways inside the house for slaves and visitors.

Another important aspect of this article is the links it makes between building types, the housing market and Ostian society. Thanks in part to the subdivision of medianum apartments into three different groups on the basis of their size and elegance, DeLaine suggests that the most prestigious apartmentsFootnote ³¹ were occupied by owners or renters belonging to the wealthy merchant class, perhaps provincial importers, who might only have needed to reside at Ostia at specific times of year. In any case, the construction, for example, of the Case a Giardino certainly entailed a considerable investment and the author proposes a potential group of socii, rather than an individual investor.Footnote ³²

Studies employing the notions and techniques of Space Syntax are an extension of the research field on built heritage. At Ostia this methodology has been applied particularly by Johanna Stöger, whose monographFootnote ³³ examines the second- and early third-century phases of Block IV, II, identifying it as a multi-purpose structure capable of promoting a high degree of social interaction between residents and visitors. She then broadens her scope to analyse the whole urban road network using the same criteria. ElsewhereFootnote ³⁴ she also considers the guild scholae as buildings defined essentially by their rapport with the external context, the road network and the public.Footnote ³⁵

The painted decorations of residential buildings are re-examined by Stella Falzone in two important survey articles.Footnote ³⁶ The first discusses the decoration of insulae dating to the period between Commodus and the mid-third century; the second offers a general picture of all periods of wall-painting in Ostia. The analysis suffers from the fragmentary state of much of the evidence, but nonetheless succeeds in giving a sense of art historical development that, given the total absence — or disappearance — of First Style paintings in Ostia, starts from around the mid-first century b.c.Footnote ³⁷ and proceeds by identifying specific analogies with the later Pompeian styles. Among these, as expected, Ostia mainly offers examples of the Third and to an even greater extent the Fourth Style, with a particularly broad sample of those second-century a.d. wall-paintings that continue the trends of the Fourth Style, sometimes in simplified form,Footnote ³⁸ linear and serial, with a widespread use of white backgrounds. For the period for which evidence is most abundant (c. a.d. 150–250), Falzone stresses progressive standardization and decreasing quality, though these trends are not uniform or exclusive: in some cases, they are contradicted by the care with which patrons underlinedFootnote ³⁹ the hierarchical relationships between the various rooms in the house. Such phenomena of flexibility and adaptation do not conflict with the existence on the Ostian market of predetermined ornamental schemes, applied serially by artisanal workshops and more or less complex depending on the patron's means.

Pensabene's monumental monograph on the use of marble in OstiaFootnote ⁴⁰ is not limited to the ornamental features of the city's buildings. Many parts of the book are indeed devoted to a systematic investigation of the technical and stylistic features of the stone architectural decorations of buildings, particularly public buildings and those open to the public: here we should note the attempt to clarify the relations between imperial, colonial or euergetic commissions on the one hand, and on the other the activity of workshops and craftsmen, for each of which a Roman or local origin is suggested.Footnote ⁴¹ However, Pensabene's interests are not restricted to this sphere alone, and he devotes an entire section to the marble trade in the two harbour towns at the mouth of the Tiber, and thus above all to the statio marmorum of Portus and related issues (for example the finishing of the blocks that arrived in a rough or partially worked state;Footnote ⁴² the links with the corresponding statio marmorum in Rome below the Aventine, for which most of the products were destined, but also with Ostia, where a share of the material was used; the interpretation of the letters and quarry marks present on many blocks, etc.).

We will return below to the reuse of marbles from the third century onwards (and in general to the sections on late antique Ostia), but we should not forget Pensabene's contribution to the study of local statuary workshops,Footnote ⁴³ distinct from those devoted to architectural decoration and also investigated in relation to the artistic trends prevailing in Rome at different times. Marble is analysed here in all its many aspects and for Ostia this volume is undoubtedly the most coherent and exhaustive study hitherto devoted to this subject.

The problems of the city's water supply have finally been tackled in a complete and convincing way thanks to the publication of a study by the École Française de RomeFootnote ⁴⁴ starting from the soundings and surveys carried out in 2003–5 at the castellum aquae of Porta Romana, adjacent to the Late Republican fortificationFootnote ⁴⁵ and already partially excavated (though without adequate documentation) in 1985–6. Naturally, Ostia's aqueduct is one — but not the only — protagonist of this study, since the cistern at Porta Romana was the point at which it entered the city.Footnote ⁴⁶ One of the conclusions of the French archaeologistsFootnote ⁴⁷ is that the creation of the castellum at Porta Romana — dating to the late Flavian periodFootnote ⁴⁸ — did not coincide with a construction or reconstruction phase of the aqueduct and that the Domitianic reservoir continued to use the supply system created (as already known) some decades earlier. They also confirm that the aqueduct underwent important reconstruction during the Severan period.

A second crucial contribution of this monograph to our understanding of the development of Ostia's water system concerns another castellum, the water cistern underneath the palaestra of the Terme del Nettuno in Regio II,Footnote ⁴⁹ probably built around a.d. 30–40. This was radically altered in the late first century, after two concomitant events: the creation of the water storage facility at Porta Romana, which replaced that of Regio II in its functions, and the first construction phase of the baths, whose foundations severed the connection between the aqueduct and the cistern. From then on, the latter served to discharge rainwater from the surface.

The book also offers a detailed examination of the connections between the final castellum of the aqueduct and the remainder of the city's water system, with particular attention to inscriptions on fistulae and theories concerning the public and private commissionsFootnote ⁵⁰ to which the authors ascribe the various works.Footnote ⁵¹ Of considerable interest for later periods is — in the third century — the work to turn the old patrol-walk on the city walls into a cocciopesto-clad channel to supply water.Footnote ⁵² We do not know for certain when the aqueduct was abandoned, though this happened after the fourth century.Footnote ⁵³

A completely separate topic is that of Ostia's gardens, most of which belonged to domus or complexes of insulae, but also to ‘public’ areas like the Piazzale delle Corporazioni. Hitherto neglected, this topic is exhaustively investigated in an articleFootnote ⁵⁴ that, after a general survey of the issues, discusses those gardens whose existence has been verified by excavations and those that, by contrast, are currently ‘suspected’ and require archaeological confirmation.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

It is difficult, and perhaps misleading, to distinguish epigraphical research from historical and archaeological studies on a given site. However, for practical reasons I will cover some important ‘purely epigraphical’ publications that appeared during this decade of studies on Ostia. Christer Bruun analyses the problem of the familia publica and especially the colony's freedmen starting from the epigraphical evidence on the name Ostiensis (or Ostiensius),Footnote ⁵⁵ whilst Ivan Di Stefano, continuing his research on the Volusii Saturnini between the first and third century, collects the documentation on them (or their freedmen) attested at Ostia.Footnote ⁵⁶

M. Cébeillac, M. L. Caldelli and F. Zevi have edited a selection of inscriptions, far larger than the symbolic figure of 100 specified in the title,Footnote ⁵⁷ that seeks to provide a complete picture of the city's history and the institutional and social life of its inhabitants and is drawn, in turn, from an epigraphical heritage that, with over 6,500 specimens, is the largest in the Roman world outside Rome itself. Practically all the entries making up the volume are published or known texts dating from the third century b.c. to the fifth century a.d., but countless new interpretations are offered.Footnote ⁵⁸ Also important is the methodological objective — announced in the title and largely achieved — of establishing a constant link between the epigraphical documents and their archaeological and monumental context.

On the subject of Ostia's collegia, Zevi re-examines the whole problemFootnote ⁵⁹ with a new interpretation of the policies adopted at Ostia (through the prefects of the annona) by Commodus and his successors, Pertinax and the Severans. According to Zevi, Ostia's ‘annonary’ associations saw a turning point between the late second and the early decades of the third century;Footnote ⁶⁰ always closely linked to the central power, they were now subjected to new provisions, particularly by Septimius Severus, in a context that we could describe as markedly ‘state-controlled’. Zevi identifies the connection between these developments and the historical events of the period in the dramatic series of convictions of pretenders to the empire and other prominent individuals, and the resulting confiscations that in Ostia benefited the corpora vital to the Roman administration. It is thus no accident that many buildings with an associative function, such as the temples of the fabri navales and the fabri tignuarii, were founded in this period.

It is evident that this series of provisions with regard to Ostia's associative institutions began under Commodus, not just from the (known) excavation data from the sanctuary of the fabri navales, but also from the epigraphical evidence on the headquarters of the pistores.Footnote ⁶¹ The site of the latter is unknown, but Zevi, following on from Bakker's studies,Footnote ⁶² identifies the Caseggiato dei Molini (after its transformation into a large bakery under the Severans) as a structure belonging to the imperial annona, as confirmed by the paintings in the adjoining Sacello del Silvano. Zevi also discusses the so-called Schola del Traiano and its ‘collegial’ phase,Footnote ⁶³ but we will deal with this issue in the topographical section of this survey.Footnote ⁶⁴

In any case, as for the collegia, the most complete re-examination of all the evidence in the recent bibliography is found in the aforementioned book by Rohde,Footnote ⁶⁵ which — for each corpus — also contains an analysis of the prosopography of the magistrates and associates, from the point of view of the integration (fundamental for Ostian society) of professional associations with the city's institutions.

Flohr's monograph does not deal extensively with professional associations, but does focus on a profession of enormous importance in Ostia: that of the fullones.Footnote ⁶⁶ We thus have an extremely useful up-to-date revision of this topic, many decades after Pietrogrande's book. Flohr tackles the Ostian evidence mainly from the perspective of the archaeological remains, but there is no shortage of theories on those manufacturing processes that cannot be identified easily on the basis of the structural data alone.Footnote ⁶⁷ One interesting idea is that the owners of fulleries sent the partially worked fabrics for the necessary finishing to retailers, who then sold them.Footnote ⁶⁸ Further, the probable total volume of textile production, which certainly exceeded local demand,Footnote ⁶⁹ raises new questions about the export trade or redistribution ‘out of’ Ostia, which — for this and other reasons — can no longer be considered just a consumer city.

Moving on to a different area of research, E. Spagnoli's examination of the corpus of coins, published and unpublished, held in the Ostia storerooms and found in the city and its suburban area offers a new study of the numismatic material, although only up to the Flavian period.Footnote ⁷⁰ The more strictly specialist aspects of this text are counterbalanced by constant reference to the colony's historical situation as it unfolded, and to the differing monetary policies adopted by rulers.

Aside from this work, what we would describe as ‘material culture’ boils down almost exclusively to research on pottery production and trade (aside from the narrow field of non-ceramic artefacts like glass and metals, etc.Footnote ⁷¹ ). In Ostia, these studies flourished considerably during the period 2004–14: nonetheless, though there were local pottery workshops, their location remains largely unknown. G. Olcese, editor of the Atlante covering the Tyrrhenian area and devoted to sites where pottery was certainly made and to wrecks,Footnote ⁷² includes for Ostia a review of the published pottery data from the 1970 excavation in the Piazzale delle Corporazioni (mostly of the Claudian period and including much information on manufacturing discards).Footnote ⁷³ This is accompanied by some references to traces of kilns, almost always of uncertain function, present elsewhere in the city.Footnote ⁷⁴

The largest quantity of information on this topic is found in the volume edited by Clementina Panella and Giorgio Rizzo as part of the series devoted to the excavation of the Terme del Nuotatore, examining, in particular, the soundings of 1973–5 in the north-eastern area, on the edge of the bath complex.Footnote ⁷⁵ The most important achievement of this very detailed work is the complete publication of the amphorae, coins and African table wareFootnote ⁷⁶ from a single huge depositFootnote ⁷⁷ consisting of 125 m² of pottery discards (about 20,000 fragments) found in a ‘secondary context’, as they came from rubbish tips in the city or the district. The way this deposit was formed explains the very few residual finds noted in the study: the resulting picture is very coherent and allows us to date the activity in question to the time of the last Antonine emperors (a.d. 160–80/90).

With Ostia VI, then, we finally have the almost complete publication of a ceramic corpus that had become famous in studies of material culture — in Italy and elsewhere — from 1970–80, and whose composition was already known from many overviews or studies of individual ceramic classes, but that had never been studied as a whole. Its fame results from the unusual size of the deposit and its materials, their chronological homogeneity and crucial contribution to the study of trade in Ostia and the Mediterranean during the second half of the second century a.d.Footnote ⁷⁸ The historical conclusions drawn by the volume editors cannot be summarized here, and the same is true of the monumental study by G. Rizzo devoted more specifically to the amphora finds from this stratigraphic context.Footnote ⁷⁹

The other major contributions on Ostia's pottery trade — in the decade under consideration — are the analyses undertaken by two American scholars, Archer Martin and Eric De Sena (or Martin alone), of the large quantity of materials yielded by the test pits dug jointly, in 1998–2001, by the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and the American Academy of Rome.Footnote ⁸⁰ Most of this information actually concerns the late antique period (see below), but Martin has published an article on amphora imports in Ostia in the early and middle imperial period,Footnote ⁸¹ which isolates four groups of contexts or ‘horizons’: for the moment we are interested in the first two, dating respectively to about a.d. 50–100 and 100–50. The accompanying graphs allow readers to visualize the percentage variations over time in the geographical provenance of the containers and the foodstuffs imported. The documentation of the DAI-AAR soundings then presents a chronological gap between about a.d. 150 and 280, now partially filled by the publication of the late Antonine contexts of the Terme del Nuotatore (supra).

Another two articles not based directly on the ceramic evidence deal with the more general problems of trade in Ostia's boom period. Michael Heinzelmann's approachFootnote ⁸² is novel, though some of his conclusions are problematic. He explains the colony's massive development in the second century a.d., despite the new Trajanic basin at Portus, by the hypothesis — unlikely in my opinion — that the large horrea built or enlarged at Ostia during the century of the ‘architectural revolution’ were not used primarily to store grain, and were not for essentially annonary purposes and funded by the State, but should be ascribed mainly to private investment.Footnote ⁸³ The resulting image of Ostia as an import-export centre — devoted mainly to mediating between the provinces of the Empire rather than to supplying Rome — is intriguing, though unproven and overly dependent on modern theoretical models.Footnote ⁸⁴

By contrast, DeLaine's articleFootnote ⁸⁵ — in part covering the same problem — does not aim to construct a theoretical framework applicable to all the commercial phenomena affecting Ostia during the middle imperial boom. Her specific subject is Ostia's ‘domestic market’ (which of course cannot be completely separated from the problem of imports and exportsFootnote ⁸⁶ ). She offers fresh treatments of auctions (on the one hand the products auctioned, on the other the spacesFootnote ⁸⁷ and the ways that sales were organized) and of the existence of covered markets like Islamic bazaars or souks; there may also have been places in which to install temporary sales facilities, for fairs or other occasional events. The section on horrea Footnote ⁸⁸ is perhaps the most important revision of the subject since Rickman's classic work. The main new conclusion is the impossibility of distinguishing clearly between their function as warehouses and that as markets, confirming that ‘multi-functionality’ that increasingly seems to be typical not just of Ostian, but of Roman architecture more generally.

TOPOGRAPHICAL STUDIES

I turn now to the topographical examination of those individual buildings, monuments, complexes and archaeological remains that were the object of specific studies during the decade 2004–14. The chronological period remains that between the late Republic and the mid-third century a.d.: the data are presented in the conventional topographical sequence since, in the absence of any other viable criterion, it closely follows the route adopted in the Guida di Ostia.

One of the buildings on which recent academic debate has been most heated is the Domitianic temple at the centre of the Piazzale delle Corporazioni. During this decade, only L. Bouke van der Meer has devoted a stand-alone article to it,Footnote ⁸⁹ but practically all those who have written on Ostian cults have formulated hypotheses and interpretations of this structure. RiegerFootnote ⁹⁰ identifies it — given the connection between the square and the area of the river port — as the temple of Pater Tiberinus, known at Ostia from inscriptions: the building, thanks to its location at the centre of a space connected with trade, navigation and the annona, thus replaced the nearby Quattro Tempietti of the Republican periodFootnote ⁹¹ as a place intended to facilitate relations between Ostia's residents and the foreigners frequenting the port. SteuernagelFootnote ⁹² prefers to interpret the temple as the seat of a probable ‘federal’ cult shared by the collegia represented in the stationes of the peristyle, thus rejecting Rieger's hypothesis in part because the front of the building faced the Theatre and not the Tiber.Footnote ⁹³

FIG. 1.

Plan of Ostia showing buildings and complexes mentioned in the text.

Rieger's reconstruction is rejected by the other authors who discuss this issue: Van Haeperen, whose review denounces its shaky foundationsFootnote ⁹⁴ and prefers, albeit with caution, the idea — already formulated in the past — of an imperial cult, and van der Meer, mentioned above. The latter refers to an ordo corporatorum, known from an inscriptionFootnote ⁹⁵ as the institution that funded the enlargement of a temple which van der Meer identifies as the building at the centre of the square. It was indeed altered during the central decades of the second century, but the identification relies exclusively on the Antonine date of the inscription, its uncertain attribution to the corpus traiectus Luculli (whose alba date back at the earliest to a.d. 140Footnote ⁹⁶ ) and the more or less corresponding start date (a.d. 146) of the statuary dedications that van der Meer thinks come from the square. Antonine enlargement aside, the author ends by suggesting that the temple was originally used for the cult of the emperors, as also accepted by Pensabene.Footnote ⁹⁷ Clearly, this thorny issue is far from resolved.

The aforementioned Quattro Tempietti are notoriously one of Ostia's most important sacred spaces, studied and discussed from the earliest research on the town. Rieger suggestsFootnote ⁹⁸ that, from their construction, the Tempietti were a sanctuary aimed at encouraging exchanges between people arriving from the river port and the colony's inhabitants. However, this new reconstruction (including drawings) is rejected by Van Haeperen, who considers the openings and the stairs behind the podium of the Tempietti, on the Tiber side, to be much later and not original. Pensabene's reconstruction plan and elevations diverge significantly from Rieger's,Footnote ⁹⁹ and he proposes his own different sequence of chronological phases.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Steuernagel,Footnote ¹⁰¹ espousing the ‘early’ date for the building technique employed in the first phase of the sanctuary (the early decades of the first century b.c.Footnote ¹⁰² ), implicitly questions the attribution of the Tempietti to the euergetism of Gamala,Footnote ¹⁰³ though he does not advance his own alternative hypothesis.

The new and complete documentation of the Grandi Horrea by a French team has hitherto produced only preliminary reports; the latestFootnote ¹⁰⁴ confirms existing theories and refines our understanding of some features. The authors date its foundation to the early first century a.d. (slightly before the traditional Claudian date), show that the theory of the original existence of a portico on the north side of the courtyard (G. Calza) is not supported by the archaeological data and confirm that the major refurbishment phase should be ascribed to the time of CommodusFootnote ¹⁰⁵ and the Severans, when the building's storage capacity was enlarged to its maximum extent: from then on it was certainly used for grain. Finally (and this is another confirmation), the French researchers mention no building work in the Grandi Horrea after the late Severan period.

The final report on the soundings and studies of the 1990s in the Casa di Diana was published in 2013,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ but in a volume without exhaustive documentation of the excavations (there are no stratigraphic sections). However, the reconstruction of the insula's building history has been significantly modified, with the identification of an initial Hadrianic phase (c. a.d. 130) when the ground-floor residence already had the form with a courtyard that it basically kept from then on. In the later Antonine phase this small courtyard was adorned with a fountain clad in precious marbles, whilst the marble and mosaic floors were relaid.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ After further alterations to the structure and painted decoration between about a.d. 180 and 225, the floors were raised between a.d. 225 and 250 with a large deposit rich in materials, whilst the insertion of the mithraeum into the north-east sector is thought to be later still (second half of the fourth century?). However, in the book both the correspondences between the chronologies and the subdivision into phases and subphases, and the reasons for the hypothesis that the shrine co-existed first with a single-family use of the ground floor and then with its transformation into a hotelFootnote ¹⁰⁸ (an old conjecture), are unclear. What is certain is that the homogeneous ceramic corpus yielded by the large deposit dates at the latest to the mid-third centuryFootnote ¹⁰⁹ and represents the last phase in the life of the house that can be documented with certainty through movable artefacts.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Among the public complexes — religious and civic — surrounding the Forum, the true function of the so-called ‘Curia’ on the north side remains the subject of controversy, driven by the discovery nearby of fragments of both the lists of Augustales and the Fasti Ostienses.Footnote ¹¹¹ RiegerFootnote ¹¹² believes that both documents may have been displayed in the building, which was thus a seat of the imperial cult given the presence of the Augustales, and at the same time — since the Fasti were in her opinion drawn up by the pontifex Volcani — a space connected to Vulcan. However, she also cites clues suggesting that the structure may in fact have hosted the meetings of the decurions, thus taking the form of a typical multi-purpose building (though the accumulation of functions in this case seems excessive). In this context, Rieger identifies one of the two Republican temples north of the Decumanus (the western temple) as the original sanctuary of Vulcan, later replaced, in her opinion, by the Domitianic or Trajanic ‘Curia’.

SteuernagelFootnote ¹¹³ does agree that the ‘Curia’ might be a cult place of Vespasian and Titus; this, in his opinion, does not necessarily contradict its interpretation as the headquarters of the decurions or of the Augustales (again, the superimposition of too many different hypotheses undermines the argument). A difficulty in Rieger's reconstruction (identified in the reviews by Van Haeperen and Pensabene)Footnote ¹¹⁴ is the lack of proof that this building was in fact where the Fasti were displayed; it is also uncertain that these were drawn up by the priest of Vulcan.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Zevi suggests that the ‘Curia’ is not a templum and points out that, if the western temple north of the Forum was indeed dedicated to Vulcan and later replaced, as Volcanal, by the ‘Curia’, it is unclear why the two buildings co-existed for some time.Footnote ¹¹⁶ This problem is so far unresolved.

As for the Forum Basilica (on the opposite side of the Decumanus from the supposed Curia), work has been doneFootnote ¹¹⁷ to recompose and complete a figurative cycle from fragments identified in groups: an initial group in the 1940s, others in the 1980s, until — with the most recent research and the publication of a study — the documented portions now consist of about 120 fragments (reconnected pieces aside). More than a unitary frieze, the reliefs originally formed a series of twenty-eight panels placed in the intercolumnar spaces in the upper order of the building. The scenesFootnote ¹¹⁸ depicted episodes of the primordia Urbis, from the deeds of Aeneas in Latium to the myths of the foundation of Rome, and present strong analogies with the frieze from the Basilica Aemilia, but probably date to the late Flavian period; they are attributed to a workshop in Rome and may have been commissioned by aristocratic families active in the area (the Acilii Glabriones?).

To conclude this survey of the public buildings in the Forum, the Tempio di Roma e Augusto has finally been definitively published in the excellent monograph by Roberta Geremia Nucci,Footnote ¹¹⁹ with M. A. Ricciardi's fine reconstruction drawings. The author provides her own assessment of all the main problems hitherto raised: the statue of Victory must have stood, as an acroterion, on the columen of the front pediment; the clipeus and civic crown at the centre of the pediment were held up by two Nikai; the statue of Roma — probably one of two cult statues — is not the (lost) original, but a modern cast; both Roma and the acroterial Victory are original high quality creations by Roman sculptors, in the Augusto-Tiberian classicizing style which also characterizes the building's architectural decorations.

The most hotly debated issue is the temple's date, connected to the problem of the establishment of the imperial cult outside Rome. Geremia Nucci prudently prefers a chronology between around a.d. 10 and 20,Footnote ¹²⁰ and thus between the end of the principate of Augustus and the start of that of Tiberius, and a commission that, again, may have resulted from a convergence of local private euergetismFootnote ¹²¹ and imperial intervention, thus leading to the first true monumentalization of the Forum space.

We now leave the Forum and continue westwards along the Decumanus, but we cannot abandon the Forum, in the broad sense, without discussing a structure that is no longer visible, but that must originally have been connected to the Basilica. The space west of the latter now looks very different due to the construction (between the late Severan period and that of the Gordians) of the large Tempio Rotondo and the square in front, but there is considerable evidence that there was another complex of public importance here between the early and middle imperial period. On inscriptional evidence the construction of this vanished building should be ascribed to the initiative of a noblewoman (perhaps with an estate in the Ostian suburbs but linked to the Roman aristocracy): a Terentia, wife of a Cluvius, who made her mark on other places in the colony and has already been studied in the past.Footnote ¹²² Two articles appeared simultaneously on the relations between this Terentia and the site in question,Footnote ¹²³ which do not challenge existing theories: two inscriptions refer to the lost building (one of which was found nearby), with identical mentions of a crypta et chalcidicum built by the woman in a.d. 6 on her own land and at her own expense, but authorized by the Senate and by a decree of the decurions. This would thus be the fullest expression of that ‘tripolar’ model of private euergetism, Roman and colonial participation that is emerging for many of Ostia's monuments. Beyond this point opinions diverge: there is no agreement either on the terminology used in the inscriptions or consequently on the architectural form of the various parts of the complex,Footnote ¹²⁴ or, finally, on its purpose.Footnote ¹²⁵ E. Fentress believes that it was used for slave auctions whilst D. Manacorda prefers to see it as a multi-purpose space for religious ceremonies, but also, for example, commercial activities.

In any case, there was certainly an intermediate construction phase between the Terentian buildings of a.d. 6 and the Tempio Rotondo of the third century. For Pensabene this was — as already proposed by Becatti — a ‘quadriportico’Footnote ¹²⁶ of which virtually nothing survives; a fragment of the Fasti Ostienses, mentioning a restoration of the crypta Terentiana in a.d. 94, may correspond chronologically to the construction of the Domitianic Basilica and the adjoining presumed ‘quadriportico’, originally connected to the Basilica by five apertures and later turned into a square in front of the Severan temple. Given the evanescence of the archaeological traces, Rieger — who offers perhaps the most detailed analysis of all the relevant evidence — is rightly cautious regarding the architecture of the lost monument (conventionally termed ‘Tempio Rotondo 1’), but agrees on a date in the Flavian or Trajanic period.Footnote ¹²⁷

The sacred area of Hercules and this god's relationship with Ostia were among the hottest topics in religious history in the decade under consideration.Footnote ¹²⁸ Fausto Zevi has written extensively on the topic:Footnote ¹²⁹ of particular importance is his very early date (third century b.c., perhaps in connection with the Punic wars) for the establishment here of an oracular cult of Hercules, partly based on the ceramic finds. There was thus a (lost) temple far older than that now visible.Footnote ¹³⁰ Zevi also discusses the god's augural importance, alongside his functions as a deity of merchants and warriors and his ‘Roman’ connections, linking these features to the bases with the signatures of Greek artists found in the area's third sacred building, the so-called Tempio dell'Ara Rotonda. These are clearly evidence of a donarium of exceptional importance, which Zevi hypothetically ascribes to individuals of the calibre of Sulla (the sack of Athens?) or Pompey (a recompense awarded to Ostia, after the victory over the pirates who had attacked it?).Footnote ¹³¹ He also attributes this sacred site to Vulcan,Footnote ¹³² on the basis of a complex argumentFootnote ¹³³ involving the transposition in publicum of a family cult of the Voturii, a decision thanks to which the Senate instituted the rites of Vulcan at OstiaFootnote ¹³⁴ and the staff in charge of them, starting from the pontifex. In other words, contrary to what has always been believed, the Ostian Vulcanal is of relatively ‘recent’ origin (first half of the second century b.c.), though its roots lie in a far more archaic world.

Finally, Zevi hypothetically assigns to this building — in his opinion the colony's only temple of Vulcan — the architrave with a dedication to this god that A. Pellegrino had previously attributed to the temple in the Piazzale delle Corporazioni (supra).Footnote ¹³⁵ The formula ex s(enatus) c(onsulto) that we read here is thus further proof that the whole sanctuary, with its three gods (Hercules, Aesculapius, VulcanFootnote ¹³⁶ ), prospered thanks to the constant convergence of three interests: those of the central state, those of local powersFootnote ¹³⁷ and those of the Roman élite, in accordance with a scheme that we have already seen at work in the colony on other occasions.

Scholars have recently devoted almost as much attention to the cult of the Dioscuri at Ostia as to Hercules or Vulcan. The hypothesis that the so-called Tempietto Repubblicano on the corner of the Decumanus and Via dei Molini was dedicated to Castor and Pollux and to Neptune was seen as ‘possible’ by RiegerFootnote ¹³⁸ and Steuernagel,Footnote ¹³⁹ but not by other authors, since it is based exclusively on the text of an inscription of uncertain provenance.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ However, interest in the issue was rekindled by the geophysical survey and test excavations carried out by German and American teams on the Tiber bank between the so-called Palazzo ImperialeFootnote ¹⁴¹ and the Tor Boacciana.Footnote ¹⁴² A large complex thought by the excavators to be a temple of the Dioscuri (perhaps established in the Julio-Claudian period) was found, set on substructures in the form of concamerationes, which the archaeologists hypothetically identified as navalia; Van Haeperen,Footnote ¹⁴³ however, considers these vaults too small for genuine war ships,Footnote ¹⁴⁴ though — theoretically — they may have been suitable for small military vessels used to protect the river mouth.

The interpretation of this monument as a temple of Castor and Pollux — and the whole problem of the cult spaces of the two gods in Ostia — is linked to the interpretation of a well-known passage of Ammianus Marcellinus,Footnote ¹⁴⁵ re-examined in depth by Van HaeperenFootnote ¹⁴⁶ and Bruun:Footnote ¹⁴⁷ it speaks of a sacrifice made in a.d. 359 by the praefectus Urbi Tertullus, who thus ended a famine afflicting the Roman people.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ The problem is: where did the sacrifice take place and, consequently, where was the temple? Ammianus says ‘apud Ostia’,Footnote ¹⁴⁹ but on a philological basis this does not necessarily mean, according to Bruun, ‘near Ostia’, in other words outside the city and specifically on the Isola Sacra,Footnote ¹⁵⁰ but could mean ‘at Ostia’, supporting the hypothetical location proposed by Heinzelmann and Martin.

Another late source cited by Bruun, the Cosmographia of Pseudo-Aetichus,Footnote ¹⁵¹ is often quoted in support of the theory that the Isola was not only home to the sanctuary of the Dioscuri but also where the annual equestrian ludi in their honour took place. However, Bruun's entire analysis seems to challenge this and thus leaves open the possibility (not the certainty) that both the annual festival celebrated by the Roman magistrates and the games took place on the left-hand bank of the Tiber.Footnote ¹⁵²

Finally, ZeviFootnote ¹⁵³ dates the introduction to Ostia of Castor and Pollux to an extremely early period (the fourth century b.c.) and shows that their rôle complemented that of Hercules (supra) on a common ‘maritime’ basis, with the former acting as gods of commerce and the latter as a primarily oracular and warrior deity.

The topography of Regiones II and I, with which we have dealt hitherto, has almost exclusively supplied bibliography on the colony's public and sacred complexes. This is at least in part because these sectors of the city — revolving around the monumental centre — hosted the city's annonary, institutional and cult functions. Moving on to the more residential southern districts (Regiones III, IV and V), we are faced with problems and publications that mainly concern domestic and ‘service’ buildings.

Among the residential districts, the large Hadrianic rectangle of the Case a Giardino — a construction and urbanism project unique of its kind — has continued to attract most attention from scholars. I have already mentioned DeLaine's Reference DeLaine2004 article. S. StevensFootnote ¹⁵⁴ has developed some ingenious calculation and simulation systems confirming — and not just ‘empirically’ assuming, as has hitherto been the case — that these insulae had four storeys eachFootnote ¹⁵⁵ and that their total height was 60 Roman feet, in accordance with the imperial building regulations known from the sources. The article is also important for the district's water supply. It is correct that the six fountains adorning it were more easily accessible to the inhabitants of the insulae at the sides of the rectangle than to those of the central blocks. As for the latrines, the author's hypothetical reconstruction allows us to refute an often repeated idea: that the upper storeys of the insulae did not have them.

S. Falzone and N. Zimmermann deal with the same apartments in the central blocks.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ For architectural and social aspects, the authors largely follow DeLaine's hypotheses (supra), extending them to the typology of some insulae situated not at the centre but at the sides of the complex (Houses of the Graffito and of the Pareti Gialle). The conclusions regarding the distribution of the various pictorial schemes in different sectors and rooms on the ground floor are identical to those already drawn by S. Falzone in her 2007 monograph (supra) on trends in Ostian painting of the late Hadrianic and Antonine period. This is the date of the majority of the decoration in houses in the central blocks, which present close parallels, for example, with those of the Insulae of the MuseFootnote ¹⁵⁷ and of the Ierodule (other houses in the so-called ‘garden’ rectangle). These are interchangeable and standardized schemes, to the extent that the authors attribute them to no more than two painter's workshops active contemporaneously.

The Casa delle Ierodule,Footnote ¹⁵⁸ on the west side of the complex, is a Hadrianic building whose excavation — begun in a partial and non-stratigraphic way in the 1960s and effectively unpublished — has been resumed with scientific criteria by a team led by S. Falzone.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ It has given rise to a publication edited by Falzone and A. Pellegrino,Footnote ¹⁶⁰ with a wealth of specialist studies by numerous authors.Footnote ¹⁶¹ The volume covers not only the excavation data, including the movable artefacts, but the residence as a whole. Its findings, emerging from the limited test excavations in front of the insula, identify the existence of an earlier building phase (with a portico, perhaps Julio-Claudian, with travertine columns) and suggest that, in the final Hadrianic arrangement, the famous ‘garden’ may have been just a paved courtyard, embellished with trees.

The book then illustrates all the aspects of the architectural configuration of the insula and its painted and mosaic decoration (now dated to around a.d. 130–140), for which I refer to the above remarks on the ornamental features of the Case a Giardino in general: in this context, the Casa delle Ierodule is a particularly luxurious and elegant example of the residential medianum type.

The so-called Domus Fulminata, on the continuation of the Decumanus outside Porta Marina, has been thoroughly re-examined by L. B. van der Meer.Footnote ¹⁶² He establishes a closer link between the building and the adjoining imposing funerary monument in tufa and travertine, which he dates to about 30–20 b.c.; he does not rule out the attribution of this mausoleum to a ‘great Ostian’ like the first Gamala.Footnote ¹⁶³ However, of most significance are the conjectures on later developments. The area is thought to have remained in the ownership of the Gamalae, and the Domus Fulminata — for which the author confirms a foundation date of about a.d. 65–75 — may have been built by the Lucilius Gamala who was duumvir at Ostia in a.d. 71, as we know from the Fasti.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ This would explain the connection that the house maintained with the tomb, where the famous ancestor of the Flavian magistrate may have been buried.

But was the Domus Fulminata really a residence? In this regard van der Meer reconsiders (and then rejects) the idea, often expressed in the past, that it was actually the headquarters of a college. The reason for ruling out this theory lies in his final interpretation of the central core of the building.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Van der Meer believes — another opinion that re-emerges periodically in the bibliography on Ostia — that the so-called ‘Foro di Porta Marina’, a rectangular colonnaded enclosure on the other side of the road, was the area sacred to Vulcan, whose cult places were often open-air and confined extra muros: this would thus solve a major mystery of Ostian topography (on all this, see above). However Vulcan was the husband of Maia, sometimes identified with the Bona Dea, and a known sanctuary of this goddess lies between the ‘Foro di Porta Marina’ on the one hand, and the road and the Domus Fulminata on the other. Finally, we know that the religious personnel in the service of Vulcan did not form a collegium Footnote ¹⁶⁶ and were not numerous, and could therefore be accommodated — for rites and sacred banquets — in the biclinium at the centre of the peristyle of the domus, and perhaps in some of the rooms opening onto it. Van der Meer's reasoning implies that we are dealing with a sort of domus publica, at the disposal of the pontifex Volcani, who officiated and perhaps even lived here. This would have occurred from the construction of the building by the Flavian Gamala (and we know that some Gamalae were priests of VulcanFootnote ¹⁶⁷ ).

This argument, nonetheless, provokes some doubts, less because the so-called ‘Foro’ is Trajanic-Hadrianic (but may have replaced an older sacred space) than due to the persisting uncertainties over the actual location of Ostia's Volcanal. The areas where fragments of the Fasti Footnote ¹⁶⁸ were found are not decisive, since they are distant from one another, suggesting a significant dispersal of the panels for reuse (see n. 111). Furthermore, the idea that the ‘square’ outside Porta Marina was a sanctuary, and specifically that of Vulcan, is explicitly rejected by some recent authors.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ The problem, then, like others discussed here, cannot be considered resolved.

Studies in the south-western sector of the city, between the ancient beach and the edge of the excavations, have been boosted by the research projects of the Universities of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (Terme di Musiciolus) and Bologna (buildings in Block IV, IX). Altogether, the data thus collected have considerably enhanced our knowledge of this area, filling out the existing picture of a belt outside the city that flourished thanks to the presence of coastal roads later systematized with the creation of the Via Severiana. We now have confirmation of the extraordinary development of bath complexes, forming an almost uninterrupted sequence on the north side of this road and amounting to as many as six balnea, attested by old and new research.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ In some of these complexes we see, in recurrent forms, the phenomenon of the late transformation into baths of buildings that originally had other functions.

We will now go on to examine individual finds. Between the Severiana and one of its diverticula, facing the Synagogue,Footnote ¹⁷¹ the Terme di Musiciolus were brought to light in several stages between the 1960s and 80s, but had remained unpublished: the documentation has now been reprocessed and published by M. Turci.Footnote ¹⁷² The first two construction phases identified — between the Antonine and the Severan period, when the coastal road was built — belong to a building that did not serve as a bath: the baths were added in the late third- and fourth-century phases and entailed the laying of polychrome mosaics, some of which are figurative (including those with athletes and the gymnasiarca Musiciolus); some of these were unfortunately stolen in 1981.

New studies were undertaken west of the Terme della Marciana as part of the ‘Progetto Ostia Marina’, a collaboration between the University of Bologna and MiBACT.Footnote ¹⁷³ Two separate buildings can be identified, named A (at the centre of Block IV, IX) and B (south-east of the former, along Via della Marciana). Sector A coincides with the so-called Terme del Sileno, which in this case functioned as a balneum from their construction in the Hadrianic period and were then radically altered in the second half of the fourth century; given their size M. David considers them of potential public interest.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The building in Sector B (already partially uncovered in the 1970s) has a similar history: again the initial construction is Hadrianic with a refurbishment in the late fourth century, involving the insertion of a small balneum. In a final phase of use, between the late fourth and early fifth century, metalworking or in any case artisanal activities were carried out in this complex.

Moving up the western Decumanus, on the eastern side of the road, the so-called Schola del Traiano and the pre-existing buildings are among the Ostian monumental complexes on which — thanks also to new excavationsFootnote ¹⁷⁵ — the greatest discoveries have emerged. We cannot yet do full justice to this debate, in part because the ‘Schola’ was one of the most discussed areas during the Secondo Seminario Ostiense (2014), whose proceedings are in press.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ However, some wide-ranging analyses by various scholars are already available and I will attempt to summarize their positions.

Chronologically, the oldest building attested here is the Domus dei Bucrani, unknown before the excavations of recent years. We now have a definitive publication of this discovery,Footnote ¹⁷⁷ consisting mainly — aside from the contextualization of the domus and its phases (initial construction in 60–50 b.c., partial new painted decoration in 40–30 and destruction in 20–10)Footnote ¹⁷⁸ — of four chapters by J.-M. Moret:Footnote ¹⁷⁹ together, these texts form a sort of very long unitary essay devoted to the ‘oecus of the Dwarves’ and its extraordinary Second Style painting cycle (40–30 b.c. phase). Moret's interpretations of this figurative programme are evocative, though they cannot be verified with certainty given the fragmentary preservation of the paintings:Footnote ¹⁸⁰ they are basedFootnote ¹⁸¹ on the hypothesis of a connection between the motifs depicted in the oecus, the myths of the foundation of Rome and some festivals of archaic origin, mainly celebrated by the lower classes of Rome. Furthermore, according to Moret, the dwarves and deformed beings that appear in some scenes may allude to the conflicts of the second triumvirate and the antagonism between Antony and Octavian. The élites of Ostia were famously involved in these political struggles and in this context the painting with dwarves — according to Moret — may also be linked to a contemporaneous change in ownership of the domus: see below.

Fundamental reading on these events — and the building's later history — is the reconstruction proposed in an article by C. Bocherens and F. Zevi,Footnote ¹⁸² based on some epigraphical materials found at the site at different times: a fistula and two stone fragments of a single inscription. The authors conclude that the complex still had a residential function in the Antonine period and was owned by C. Fabius Agrippinus, the suffect consul of a.d. 148. But their argument goes much further back in time, seeing in this building plot a fairly exceptional example of continued ownership, despite the succession of residential buildings each constructed on the rubble of its predecessor. After the destruction of the Domus dei Bucrani and following a significant raising of the floor level, a peristyle domus was built in the mid-Augustan period: it was already known, but Bocherens and Zevi now identify its owner as a C. Fabius Longus, ancestor of Agrippinus.Footnote ¹⁸³

At the other chronological extreme, this continued presence in the area of the same aristocratic family was interrupted only when a figure with the same cognomen as the consul of a.d. 148 — another Fabius Agrippinus, then governor of Syria — was murdered in a.d. 219 on the orders of Elagabalus, and his properties were confiscated. Only thenFootnote ¹⁸⁴ (as confirmed by the pottery and coin finds) was the splendid building now visible constructed; it may have been a collegial seat, though there is no certainty regarding the corpus that occupied it.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ However, it was probably not used for long, since the building works of the fourth century suggest that at this time the structure was again turned into a domus. For the latter developments we must await the definitive publication of the data from the new excavations.

On the corner of the western Decumanus and Via del Pomerio stands a building traditionally thought to be Ostia's macellum. This interpretation was challenged after the soundings of the University of Augsburg and the considerations of the excavators, who did not, however, suggest an alternative attribution.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ Now F. Marini RecchiaFootnote ¹⁸⁷ re-examines some known epigraphical fragments alongside other recently identified ones and offers a stringent analysis and his own rendering of the probable inscription on the façade of the macellum. It was built, de sua pecunia and in solo privato, by two wealthy freedmen of the Julio-Claudian family, a Nymphodotus and a Pothus: the latter was the former's ex-slave, and the names of both are also present in other inscriptions.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ Finally, a panel previously published by H. Bloch is thought to commemorate the refurbishment of the meat market under Trajan by an unknown curator; on this occasion the above text, dating to the early imperial period, was copied without variations and inserted into the new inscription.

As for the function of the building facing onto Via del Pomerio, though Kockel and Ortisi's observations are undoubtedly well founded, Marini Recchia does not accept that they rule out the standard interpretation, particularly as all the inscribed materials cited come from the complex of the so-called macellum and the adjoining Tabernae dei Pescivendoli. Finally, the scholar asks what relation there may have been between the macellum built by the first Gamala and the foundation of the two freedmen.Footnote ¹⁸⁹

Moving on to the Campo della Magna Mater, Rieger's complete re-examination of the Ostian rites of the Phrygian godsFootnote ¹⁹⁰ confirms, among other things, that the cult structures of the Campo were initially built in the first century, probably during the principate of Claudius,Footnote ¹⁹¹ and that — after some works in the Hadrianic period — the main renovation phase (and most of the epigraphical dedications and votive statues) dates to the time of Antoninus Pius.Footnote ¹⁹²

The completeness and accuracy of all the documentation devoted by Rieger to the Campo are not doubted,Footnote ¹⁹³ but this has not exempted even this chapter of her book from criticisms. I have already mentioned some; other critiques have focused on the author's tendency to backdate some epigraphical and archaeological evidence present in the sanctuary.Footnote ¹⁹⁴

Finally, Rieger has raised doubts about the fossa sanguinis for the taurobolia,Footnote ¹⁹⁵ according to Calza cut into a tower of the Republican walls next to Porta Laurentina. The (now universal) rejection of Calza's theory is shared by SteuernagelFootnote ¹⁹⁶ and Van Haeperen.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ They add some considerations deriving from recent trends in studies of the cult of Cybele (also mentioned by Rieger), which tend to deny that the taurobolium was actually the bloody initiation ritual described by Christian apologists of the fourth century.

We end our topographical tour inside the walls of Ostia with the new theories of A. Pellegrino on the Domus della Fortuna AnnonariaFootnote ¹⁹⁸ and finally by examining the Terme del Nuotatore. I have already discussed these citing a monograph on material culture;Footnote ¹⁹⁹ another volume in the same seriesFootnote ²⁰⁰ was devoted to an overall reconsideration of the building's occupation phase, obtained thanks to a very detailed ‘translation’ — in contemporary archaeological parlance — of the stratigraphic recording of the excavation, undertaken many years ago (between 1966 and the first half of the 1970s). The hard work of the book's authors is evident from both the chronological tables by phases and activitiesFootnote ²⁰¹ and the high quality of the plans, sections and architectural reconstructions.

As concerns the historical contents, the confirmation of the building's initial chronology — in the Flavian period — allows us to establish a connection with two known facts. First, Maura MedriFootnote ²⁰² believes that the cistern of the baths was supplied by the Domitianic castellum aquae at Porta Romana. Second, the discovery — in nearby Via del Sabazeo — of an inscription attesting work by Vespasian on an aqueductFootnote ²⁰³ suggests a unitary plan by the Flavian emperors aimed at increasing the colony's water supply, especially to its south-eastern districts.Footnote ²⁰⁴ The epigraphical evidence is also crucial for the interpretation of the Trajanic-Hadrianic phase of the balneum, the date of the fistulae inscribed with the name of two related noblewomen, Larcia and Arria Priscilla. Aside from the genealogical issues and the opinions of earlier scholars, M. MedriFootnote ²⁰⁵ thinks that we are dealing with a private act of munificence, connected to the contemporaneous refurbishment of the baths. This does not conflict with her conviction that the Nuotatore complex was a public building, given its size (between that of Ostia's large imperial complexes and that of normal balnea meritoria) and the existence of a palaestra, not usually present in private baths. Certainly, in light of these new considerations, we can suggest a structure serving not a single district but a larger sector of the city, or even the whole colony. The building's history, before its abandonment (see below), nonetheless ended with a further transformation in the Severan period, entailing a subdivision into two sectors and the probable residential use of one of these, in line with the signs of difficulties that began to emerge — in my opinion — during the first half of the third century, in various aspects of the city's life.Footnote ²⁰⁶

LATE ANTIQUITY

Ostia's late imperial phases (between about a.d. 250 and 450) remain an open critical problem, perhaps more so than the various aspects of the city's earlier history. The hypothesis of a first serious crisis in the system of insulae and service buildings at Ostia in the second half of and towards the late third centuryFootnote ²⁰⁷ has been fully confirmed by new discoveries and studies. The early date (from a.d. 230–40) of the abandonment phases of the Terme del Nuotatore remains unchanged after the re-examination of the complex by M. Medri and V. Di Cola (see above). For the Casa di Diana we have no certain evidence of a final construction period lasting until the late fourth century,Footnote ²⁰⁸ and the most plausible hypothesis thus remains the traditional one of abandonment in around a.d. 270–80. But above all, a fact of enormous importance was provided by the aforementioned study of the Casa delle Ierodule,Footnote ²⁰⁹ the first major stratigraphic excavation of the destruction layers of a residential building at Ostia. The archaeologists have shown that the abandonment deposit of the ground floor, the collapse of the ceilings of the upper floors and the spoliation of the brick walls of the insula date at the latest to the early fourth century, and that this house did not even see the poor and precarious occupation of the upper storeys (above the deposits) found in other insulae.

Contrasting with the serious difficulties experienced by the ancient colony at this timeFootnote ²¹⁰ is a group of well-known aristocratic domus with luxurious decoration, a true architectural type that first appeared at Ostia in around the Gordian periodFootnote ²¹¹ and whose development lasted until the early decades of the fifth century. Among the most recent research Pensabene records all the decorative architectural elements found not only in the aristocratic domus, but in all the monumental complexes of Ostia and Portus between the mid-third and early fifth century:Footnote ²¹² this is the most complete documentation hitherto published on these features and has made it possible to modify or refine many chronologies.

Secondly, the catalogue of certain or presumed aristocratic residences has seen some new additions with respect to the ‘canon’ established by G. Becatti: these complexes are always highly luxurious and monumental. The so-called Edificio dell'Opus Sectile outside Porta Marina, famous for its marble decorations and much debated on an interpretative level, is now usually thought to be a residence,Footnote ²¹³ the richest and perhaps the largest in Ostia. The so-called Schola del Traiano is considered with a high degree of probability to be a luxurious domus (cf. supra) during the fourth-century occupation phase. Finally, the so-called Sede degli Augustali on the Decumanus (Regio V) can no longer be considered as the meeting place of this college after the well-founded criticisms by M. Laird of G. and R. Calza's old theories:Footnote ²¹⁴ many believe that in the fourth century it may have been used as a house (during this phase it presents some of the features typical of late Ostian domus).Footnote ²¹⁵

Many recent studies have discussed these residences as a group. In addition to Pensabene's work, R. TioneFootnote ²¹⁶ concentrates particularly on some domus considered to be ‘minor’ (but in fact very interesting, for their architectural typology if nothing else) and on specific problems relating to building techniques, with confirmation of the late use of opus reticulatum in private construction at Ostia. The proceedings of the annual AISCOMFootnote ²¹⁷ conferences also contain numerous papers on the mosaics and sectilia of Ostia (especially late Ostia), most notably an essay by Pensabene on the form taken by reuse and late restorations in floor coveringsFootnote ²¹⁸ and two articles by M. Bruno and F. Bianchi.Footnote ²¹⁹ In the first of these, the unusual mosaics of some rooms in the Domus dei Pesci and in the Domus del Protiro stand out: here, in the mid-third century a.d., the patrons attempted to reproduce the ‘refined’ decorative motifs of the early imperial period. In the second article, the authors highlight the heterogeneity of the mosaic schemes adopted in the fourth-century Domus del Ninfeo: for Room H they speak, as for the aforementioned cases, of copies of ‘antique’ motifs, whilst the mosaic in Tablinum D is qualitatively on a par with the most important examples known not just at Ostia but even in Rome.

Two of my own recent studies reconsidered, after some years, the problem of the ‘major’ Ostian domus: the first attempted to contextualize them historically as a group,Footnote ²²⁰ whilst the second examined two case studies, the adjacent houses delle Colonne and dei Pesci.Footnote ²²¹ In the transition between the third- and fourth-/fifth-century phases, the crisis in the relationship between aristocratic residences and small-scale commerce was accentuated sharply, with the abolition of numerous tabernae, and the demographic crisis in Ostia worsened: single-family domus invaded the space previously occupied by one or more intensively inhabited insulae, whose upper storeys (previously used for rented apartments) were usually abandoned or incorporated into aristocratic residences. The most striking instances of these developments can be found in some of the most luxurious and latest houses (the Domus del Ninfeo, dei Dioscuri, dei Tigriniani,Footnote ²²² dating to the second half of the fourth and the early decades of the fifth century): it is no coincidence that they are concentrated in the western sector of Ostia, in connection with the route of the Via SeverianaFootnote ²²³ and its continuation in the urban area, leading — via the Decumanus and Via della Foce — to the river crossing and Portus.

At the same time, the architectural typologies based around a central peristyle (still adopted in the third century) fell into disuse and more irregular schemes were established, suggesting possible differentiated internal pathways for the family of the dominus, visitors and slaves.Footnote ²²⁴ From the point of view of social history, the occupants of these residences, virtually all unknown, were probably members of the Roman senatorial class (of whose presence in the city there are epigraphical traces) or of the surviving local élites.Footnote ²²⁵ Evidently these individuals found it economically advantageous to buy buildings cheaplyFootnote ²²⁶ and turn them into wealthy houses in order to control, from a discreet distance, trade at nearby Portus (infra), in which the aristocrats were interested either for private reasons or because they held posts in the praefectura annonae Footnote ²²⁷ and the praefectura Urbi. Finally, it is highly likely that these houses were frequently bought and sold, or even rented, since the domini might need them only for certain seasons of the year or during their tenure of specific offices.

Studies of domestic architecture certainly do not exhaust the research potential offered by late antique Ostia. Douglas Boin's recent monograph tackles this topic as a whole,Footnote ²²⁸ but his analysis of the archaeological evidence is partial and his methodological framework contentious.Footnote ²²⁹ One of the main objects of Boin's study is the issue of the different religious identities (pagan or ‘traditional’, Jewish, Christian) present at Ostia during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The author examines the clashes — and to an even greater extent the interactions — between these religious groups and treats in detail the events in the city's Christian community, so that his work could be considered, title notwithstanding, as the first historical (more than archaeological) analysis devoted specifically to ‘Christian’ Ostia,Footnote ²³⁰ although Boin's views in this matter remain decidedly personal.

Axel Gering's work offers, by contrast, a complete archaeological overview of the final centuries of Ostia's history, up-dated with respect to the bibliography of the 1980s. He paintsFootnote ²³¹ a very complex picture of the late third to fifth centuries, marked by dramatic inequalities, with a contrast between aspects of continuity in the embellishment of the city (also through an unprecedented profusion of marbles) and instances of crisis and serious decline. The monumentalization is concentrated in what Gering calls the Promenade, giving access to the city, the central area and the Forum (in other words, the east–west stretch of the Decumanus), and is manifested particularly in the construction of nymphaea, fountains, squares and porticoes. By contrast, the decline,Footnote ²³² originated, among other things, by the closure of the river docks and the warehouses,Footnote ²³³ led to population decrease, the closure or narrowing of many minor streets (invaded by ruins and debris), and the collapse of entire residential buildings — some abandoned for good, others reoccupied, but in a context of evident hardship.

Essentially, in this important essay Gering alternates between two tendencies: one leads him to draw all the consequences from a realistic depiction of the city's crisis as it emerges from countless pieces of archaeological evidence; the other induces him to stress — perhaps excessively — examples of late flourishing, moments of ‘recovery’ and new building initiatives,Footnote ²³⁴ all of which nonetheless surely took place.Footnote ²³⁵

Three further closely linked texts by the same author go in the same direction.Footnote ²³⁶ In these, Gering adopts the same documentation criteria as in the previous article, such as the fine colour maps that, among other things, provide an enlightening representation of the phenomena of pedestrianization and blockages used to prevent road traffic entering not just roads, but entire districts (especially north of the Decumanus). However, the resulting picture contradicts the stated — but not detailed — existence of new markets similar to souks, and also of new production zones.Footnote ²³⁷ More generally — leaving aside some individual building ‘microhistories’ in the areas of Via della Foce and Caseggiato del Sole, analysed by Gering — it is difficult to accept his idea that, between the fourth and fifth century, the reuse of ruins to reoccupy a certain number of insulae can be interpreted as the result of an intelligent, creative and planned ‘crisis-management’, with a view to a new and positive urban transformation, rather than as an expedient adopted — in an unplanned and often problematic way — to live with the ruins themselves.

In any case, in the same years the interpretative framework of late antique Ostia has been redrawn by Gering and his collaborators in another series of publications, with help from the results of the BKO projectFootnote ²³⁸ conducted between 2008 and 2010 by the Humboldt-Universität (Gering) and the University of Kent (Luke Lavan), and later continued by the German team alone. This stratigraphic study covered the city centre, between the so-called Foro della Statua Eroica and the road-fork west of the castrum, focusing on the Decumanus and the old Forum, with its baths and adjacent complexes: the main reports hitherto publishedFootnote ²³⁹ are splendidly illustrated. One of the focal points of the study is the aforementioned Foro della Statua Eroica, with the adjacent exedra on the Decumanus: these spaces saw refurbishment and monumentalization phases that Gering and Lavan date to between the late third and the second half of the fifth century. As concerns its functions, the excavators believe that in its late configuration the Foro della Statua Eroica can be identified as the macellum restored by the city prefect Aurelius Anicius Symmachus in a.d. 418–20, as we know from an inscription found not in situ, but in the area.Footnote ²⁴⁰

The second major zone covered by the BKO project is the colony's ‘official’ Forum, and especially its porticoes, documenting in particular the relaying of the floors with reused marble slabs,Footnote ²⁴¹ and their preparatory layers. These works followed one another over time and in Gering's most recent publications the chronologies of their later phases present some oscillations: however, the scholar dates them to between the middle and the second half of the fifth century, or even later.

The published results of the BKO project lend themselves to numerous considerations and some criticisms. To verify the very late dates of the layers documented by the German and British teams we must await the complete publication of the pottery and coin finds. For the time being, we are doubtful of interpretations according to which, for example, the Forum continued to be Ostia's civic centre long after the mid-fifth century.Footnote ²⁴² Other assessments seem more prudent, for example seeing the Forum area in this period as a place where market stalls or wooden stands, for spectacles and events of various types, could be erected.Footnote ²⁴³ The hypothetical identification of the complex of the Aula del Buon Pastore and the so-called ‘Basilica’ on the Decumanus (I, II, 3–4) as a late seat of the prefects of the annona Footnote ²⁴⁴ or the prefects of the city, and the theories about the new administrative and cult activities established in the palaestra of the Terme del Foro seem insufficiently supported.Footnote ²⁴⁵ Finally, it is not certain that the Foro della Statua Eroica did in fact host the macellum later restored by Symmachus, the more so since Gering also says that there may have been more than one late meat market at Ostia: the problem of the connection between this issue and the enigma of the building traditionally considered to be the colony's macellum remains open (see above).Footnote ²⁴⁶

More generally, the adoption of an interpretative scheme more orientated towards continuity entails — in the most recent texts by the directors of the BKO project — a far smaller number of notes on the relations between this late and very late monumentalization of the city centre and the data on luxury residential architecture (where significant work is no longer documented after about a.d. 420), not to speak of the demise of the rôle previously played by guilds and their headquarters at Ostia.Footnote ²⁴⁷

A new overall and convincing picture of how the city functioned in its last centuries of life, and its relations with Portus (see infra), is thus still lacking. Nonetheless, the enormous scientific importance of the BKO project is an established fact and — awaiting more precise chronologies — the data supplied by the programme directors allow us to move forward by at least a generation the start of what, in my opinion, can be considered the definitive crisis of the city. In absolute terms, I would currently tend to date an important breaking and turning point in the settlement's history to around the mid-fifth century, since recent stratigraphical information indicates that this is when some domus were abandoned.Footnote ²⁴⁸

In conclusion, whilst no-one would deny the importance of the phenomena — in any case very well known — attesting a late antique architectural flourishing at Ostia, sometimes in luxurious forms, we nonetheless need to continue studying its nature, motivations and limits (spatial and chronological). We can already formulate some hypotheses: the aristocrats who continued to occupy the fine domus of Ostia may now have acted collectively as the city's patroni as the colony's old magistracies had vanished some time before (or, at least, are no longer documented). It was unfitting for individuals of senatorial rank to frequent a city marked too visibly by decay, and this may explain the unequal, fragmented and highly contradictory situation that seems to characterize the late antique city (supra). In other words, those members of the dominant classes who continued to take an interest in Ostia may have entrusted to the prefects of the annona and of Rome — prominent functionaries belonging to the same social class — the monumentalization of the entrance to the city from Via Ostiense (Piazzale della Vittoria), of the Promenade and of the Forum, alongside the restorations of the fourth and early fifth centuries in the most important spectacle and service buildings (the Theatre, the large imperial baths, the macellum).Footnote ²⁴⁹

The repercussions of these high profile presences directly or indirectly benefited the city's remaining lower and middle classes, certainly impoverished and lacking significant means of sustenance, but, for example, still able to attend the theatre or frequent the public and private baths.Footnote ²⁵⁰ As such, it is significant that the city did not shut itself into an ‘autarchic’ economic dimensionFootnote ²⁵¹ not even after the ‘second crisis’ at Ostia mentioned above.Footnote ²⁵² This is demonstrated by two sets of data: the high proportion of amphorae from the provinces — especially Africa, but also the Aegean — and of table and kitchen ware from North Africa in the layers of the fourth to fifth centuries and even beyond;Footnote ²⁵³ and the fact that even in the mid-fifth century the Ostian economy, no less than that of Portus, was characterized by a lively monetary circulation, as shown by an article by E. SpagnoliFootnote ²⁵⁴ starting from a specific excavation, but of more general interest.

PORTUS

It is impossible to fully understand Ostia without studying Portus, from the creation of the imperial basins north of the river mouth and the development around them of an independent urban settlement, and the strip of land between the two cities, later named Isola Sacra. Here the existence of an ‘Ostian Trastevere’ of the imperial period had been known for some time, but no-one thought that this Ostia on the Isola, in other words on the right-hand bank of the natural branch of the Tiber, was of the size and importance revealed in 2014 by the magnetometric studies of the British universities that had been working in the area for years (see below). The results were initially disseminated exclusively through the mass media, but S. Keay has recently discussed them during the Terzo Seminario Ostiense (2015). For a historical and archaeological evaluation we must await their publication in the proceedings, but it is already clear that the geophysical data show the unprecedented and extraordinary image of a large ‘Trastevere’ made up of probable horrea and other possibly public buildings, and surrounded by a wall with towers.

Previous Italo-British surveys had already made it possible to re-examine many ancient remains present on the Isola,Footnote ²⁵⁵ crossed by the Via Flavia (probably connected to Ostia by a bridge over the natural branch of the river) and by an artificial canal running parallel to the road: the latter discovery is new and of enormous interest. The Necropolis of Portus, by contrast, is less studied in recent research, though an important phase of excavation and conservation had been undertaken in the necropolis in the 1970s and 80s.Footnote ²⁵⁶

North of the Isola Sacra and the Fossa Traiana, our archaeological knowledge of the imperial ports, the city of Portus and its territory has increased significantly in recent times: an aforementioned bookFootnote ²⁵⁷ summarizes most of these, gathering an impressive amount of data on all aspects of this issue. The volume summarizes the results of the Portus Project, an Italo-British research projectFootnote ²⁵⁸ started in 2006 (as a continuation of studies begun in previous years) and still ongoing. As already said, the methodological significance of the project lies, among other things, in the large-scale and combined use of geophysical surveying techniques, accompanied by traditional test excavations. The texts are the work of almost thirty authors: significant discoveries include geological and hydrogeological evidence that the Claudian basin was accessed from the west, via two stretches of sea at the sides of the lighthouse island (thus definitively adopting the Castagnoli-Giuliani theory).Footnote ²⁵⁹ Another strong point of the book is the preliminary reports of the excavations in the so-called ‘Imperial Palace’, whose building phases have been reconstructed (indicating that it was also equipped with an amphitheatre-like structure).

Many chapters are devoted to a brief examination of the pottery and coins yielded by the soundings,Footnote ²⁶⁰ and this is true both for the ‘Palazzo Imperiale’ and for the so-called ‘Antemurale’ (in fact an internal bank of the basin of Claudius on the south-western side). The result is one of the volume's most important historical findings: the very late date of the so-called ‘Constantinian’ walls of Portus. Their chronology had already been moved to the early fifth century in the 1990s, but it is now fixed at around a.d. 475–90, with the identification of a praefectus Urbi of Odoacer as the possible patron. This and countless other data support the image of a late antique flourishing of Portus, with its chronological focal point far later than was until recently thought, during the decades in which Ostia was facing its definitive crisis: the city's large Christian BasilicaFootnote ²⁶¹ was turned into a genuine church of canonical type (probably the cathedral of Portus) only in around a.d. 430.Footnote ²⁶² On another level, the first signs of contraction of Portus’ horrea emerge only in the second half of the fifth century,Footnote ²⁶³ but this did not entail their abandonment, to the extent that the walls intended to defend them were built at the same time. Also important are G. Boetto's new interpretation of the Roman ships from the basin of Claudius;Footnote ²⁶⁴ other publications by S. Keay, which — after Portus and its Hinterland — have tackled, among other things, the excavation and study of a possible building with navalia overlooking the hexagonal Trajanic basin;Footnote ²⁶⁵ and the writings of C. Morelli and others, dedicated to the new (and often extraordinary) data on the environs of Portus, and especially to the organization of the area of the salinae populi Romani. Footnote ²⁶⁶