Ostia Antica
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Location | Ostia, Lazio, Italy |
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Coordinates | 41°45′21″N 12°17′30″E / 41.75583°N 12.29167°E |
Type | Settlement |
Area | 150 hectares (1.5 km2)[1] |
History | |
Abandoned | 9th century AD |
Cultures | Ancient Rome |
Site notes | |
Ownership | Public |
Public access | Yes |
Website | www |
Ostia Antica (lit. 'Ancient Ostia') was an ancient Roman city and the port of Rome located at the mouth of the Tiber. It is near modern Ostia, 25 km (16 mi)) southwest of Rome. Due to silting and the invasion of sand, the site now lies 3 km (2 mi) from the sea.[2] The name Ostia (the plural of ostium) derives from Latin os 'mouth'.
Ostia is now a large archaeological site noted for the excellent preservation of its ancient buildings, magnificent frescoes and impressive mosaics. The city's decline after antiquity led to harbor deterioration, marshy conditions, and reduced population. Sand dunes covering the site aided its preservation. Its remains provide insights into a city of commercial importance. As in Pompeii, Ostia's ruins provide details about Roman urbanism that are not accessible within the city of Rome itself.[3]
History
Origins
Ostia may have been Rome's first
Ostia probably developed originally as a naval base, and in 267 BC, during the
Civil wars
Ostia was a scene of fighting during the period of civil wars in the 80s BC. In 87 BC Marius attacked the city in order to cut off the flow of trade to Rome, aided by his generals Cinna, Carbo and Sertorius, and captured the city and plundered it.[8]
Sacking by pirates
In 68 BC, the town was sacked by
The town was then re-built and provided with defensive walls started under
Imperial Ostia
The town was further developed during the first century AD under the influence of Tiberius, who ordered the building of the town's first forum.
Due to the small size of the harbour at Ostia, a new harbour at Portus was built by Claudius on the northern mouths of the Tiber (Fiumara Grande). This harbour was not sufficiently protected from storms, and needed to be supplemented by the hexagonal harbour built by Trajan and finished in 113 AD.[13] Also at a relatively short distance was the harbour of Civitavecchia (Centum Cellae) developed by Trajan. These ports took business away from Ostia and began its commercial decline.[13]
Nevertheless, Ostia grew to a peak of some 100,000 inhabitants in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.[14]
Ostia itself was provided with all the services a town of the time could require; a large theatre, many public baths (such as the Thermae Gavii Maximi, or Baths at Ostia), numerous taverns and inns and a firefighting service. The popularity of the cult of Mithras is evident in the discovery of eighteen Mithraea.[15] Ostia also contained the Ostia Synagogue, the earliest synagogue yet identified in Europe.[16]
Late-Roman and sub-Roman Ostia
Although it used to be thought that the city entered a period of slow decline after Constantine the Great made Portus a municipality, indicated by some apartment blocks being replaced by houses of the rich, recent excavations show that the town continued to thrive.[17] Numerous baths are recorded as still operating in the 4th and 5th centuries with major repairs of the city's Neptune Baths in the 370s. During the 4th century, the city spilled over the southern walls to the sea south of Regions III and IV.
The poet
Prosperity in the 5th century is indicated by repairs on baths (26 remained in operation during the 4th century), public buildings, church construction, street repaving, residential and business expansion beyond the perimeter of the south wall (the presence of a small harbour, the Porta Marina on the sea, is attested). A huge 4th century villa east of the Maritime baths was built. The river port on the western edge of the town was expanded with the navalia, a squarish basin built in from the river. A warehouse on the east side and, behind it, a large bath complex were built.[20]
It became an
After the
Surroundings
South of Ostia many rich villa-estates were developed from the Republican era along the coast road to Laurentum.[23] Pliny described the route towards his villa there: “There are two different roads to it: if you go by that of Laurentum, you must turn off at the fourteenth mile-stone; if by that of Ostia, at the eleventh. Both of them are sandy in places, which makes it a little heavier and longer by carriage, but short and easy on horseback. The landscape affords plenty of variety, the view in some places being closed in by woods, in others extending over broad meadows, where numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, which the severity of the winter has driven from the mountains, fatten in the spring warmth, and on the rich pasturage”.
Today several well-preserved Roman villas south of Ostia have been excavated in the area of Castel Fusano, including the Villa della Palombara excavated in 1989-2008.
Excavations
The remains were used over the centuries as a quarry for
The
Under Benito Mussolini massive excavations were undertaken from 1939 to 1942[5] during which several remains, particularly from the Republican Period, were brought to light. These were interrupted when Italy became a major battlefield of World War II.
In the post-war period, the first volume of the official series Scavi di Ostia appeared in 1954; it was devoted to a topography of the town by Italo Gismondi and after a hiatus the research still continues today. Though untouched areas adjacent to the original excavations were left undisturbed awaiting a more precise dating of Roman pottery types, the "Baths of the Swimmer", named for the mosaic figure in the apodyterium, were meticulously excavated, in 1966–70 and 1974–75, in part as a training ground for young archaeologists and in part to establish a laboratory of well-understood finds as a teaching aid.
It has been estimated that two-thirds of the ancient town are as yet unexcavated.
In 2014, a
Modern day
The site of Ostia Antica is open to the public. Finds from the excavation are housed onsite in the Museo Ostiense.
Media
- Ostia was featured in the novels Claudius the God, both written by British novelist Robert Graves. The novels include scenes set at Ostia spanning from the reign of Augustus to the reign of Claudius, including the departure of Agrippa to Syria and Claudius's reconstruction of the harbour. In the 1976 television series, Ostia was frequently mentioned but never actually seen.
- Ostia features in A War Within: The Gladiator by Nathan D. Maki. After an assassination attempt on Emperor Commodus the protagonists Antonius and Theudas escape by clinging to a barge on the Tiber, reaching Ostia, and stowing away on a trireme heading north to Ravenna.
- Ostia appears briefly towards the end of the Roman Empire section of the Judaea. In the film, however, Ostia is only ever referred to as simply "the port".
- Ostia's beach and port serves as the location for the 1993 music video of the song "La solitudine" by Laura Pausini.
- Ostia is mentioned several times in the 2005 HBO/BBC historical drama series Rome.
- Ostia is mentioned in the 2000 film Gladiator, when the protagonist, Maximus, learns that his army is camped at Ostia and awaiting orders.
- One of the wonders buildable in the "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" mod for Sid Meier's Civilization III is called the "Portus Ostiae".
- Ostia is the name of the Magic World's lost kingdom and the location of the gladiatorial games in the manga series Negima! Magister Negi Magi.
- Ostia is the name of the most important city of the Lycian Alliance in the Fire Emblem series.
- Ostia is mentioned in several novels in Marcus Didius Falcoseries.
- Ostia is featured in the film Rome Adventure from 1962.[27]
- Ostia is a central location in the children's novel series The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence, and its television adaption.
Gallery
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Street and dwellings
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Temple of the Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva
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The inscription originally placed on the main gate
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Theatrical masks, part of the architectural decoration of the Theatre (regio II, insula VII)
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Dolia embedded in the ground at Caseggiato dei dolii
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Forum Baths (frigidarium)
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Floor pavement. Room C of the House of Cupid and Psyche (regio I, insula XIV)
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Statue of Attis in the Shrine of Attis
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View of the archaeological site
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Via delle TombeV
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Room 5 of the House of the Painted Vaults. A wall painting of an erotic scene is on the south wall. 250 CE
See also
Notes
- ^ "History - Ostia Antica". www.ostiaantica.beniculturali.it. Archived from the original on 13 July 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- ^ Ostia-Introduction http://www.ostia-antica.org/intro.htm Archived 2017-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-203-83057-4.
- ^ "Ancus Marcius, the fourth of the kings from Romulus after the founding of the city [Rome] founded this first colony" (Anco Marcio regi quarto a Romulo qui Ab urbe condita primum coloniam --- deduxit).
- ^ a b "Ostia - Italy". britannica.com.
- ^ "Ostia - Introduction". www.ostia-antica.org. Archived from the original on 2017-09-03. Retrieved 2006-12-05.
- ^ White, Michael. "OSMAP Building Types". www.laits.utexas.edu. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ^ Appian, The Civil Wars, 1.8, ed. Horace White, 1899
- ^ Cicero, On the Command of Cn. Pompeius, 33
- ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius. "To the citizens on Gnaeus Pompeius's command" – via Wikisource.
- ^ EDR031435, EDR031505
- ^ "Topographical dictionary - The city walls". www.ostia-antica.org.
- ^ a b c "Ostia - Italy". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ISBN 9781741048568– via Google Books.
- ^ Griffith, Alison. "Topographical dictionary - Mithraism". www.ostia-antica.org. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ^ L. Michael White, "Synagogue and Society in Imperial Ostia: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence" The Harvard Theological Review 90.1 (January 1997), pp 23-58; Anders Runesson, "The Oldest Original Synagogue Building in the Diaspora: A Response to L. Michael White" HTR 92.4 (October 1999), pp 409-433; L. Michael White "Reading the Ostia Synagogue: A Reply to A. Runesson", HTR 92.4 (October 1999), pp 435-464.
- ISBN 978-1-316-60153-2
- ^ "RUTILIUS NAMATIANUS". www.ostia-antica.org. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ^ Ostia in Late Antiquity, Boin, 2013, pp. 22, 25. The poet was lamenting the lost greatness of Rome after the sack of 410.
- ^ Ostia in Late Antiquity, Boin, 2013, pp. 21, 24, 52-53, 56, 57-65, 165, 231-236
- ^ "St. Augustine at Ostia". celt.ucc.ie. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ISBN 014044114X.
- ^ Carta degli insediamenti del litorale laurentino da Lanciani 1903, cit. a nota 5, tav. XIII, fig. 3.
- ISBN 978-8870470918
- ^ Thomas, Emily (17–19 April 2014). "Archaeologists Unearth New Areas Of Ancient Roman City". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
- ^ Earl, Graeme (16 April 2014). "New city wall discovered at Ostia". University of Southampton. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
- ^ "Rome Adventure, Filming Locations". IMDB.com. IMDB. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
References
- Archaeological reports
- Bigi, Daniele. Scavi di Ostia XVIII: Il Caseggiato del Serapide. L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 9788891328298.
- Discussions
- Boatwright, Mary Taliaferro. The Romans: From Village to Empire. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP (2012): 248
- Hermansen, Gustav 1982. Ostia: Aspects of Roman City Life (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press)
- Meiggs, R. (1960) 1973. Roman Ostia 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press) The standard overview.
- Packer, James E. 1971 The Insulae of Imperial Ostia" M.Am.Acad. Rome 31
- Pavolini, C. 'Ostia: Guida Archeologica Laterza (Rome:Laterza) (Italian)
- Priester, S. Vielgeschossige Wohnbauten außerhalb der Tibermetropole, in: Ad summas tegulas. Untersuchungen zu vielgeschossigen Gebäudeblöcken mit Wohneinheiten und insulae im kaiserzeitlichen Rom, L'Erma Di Bretschneider, Roma 2002, pp. 217 ff.
- Lorenzatti Sandro, Ostia. Storia Ambiente Itinerari Roma 2007 (Rome:Genius Loci)
External links
- Photographs of Ostia at DigitalMapsoftheAncientWorld retrieved August 13, 2022