A Wander through Ostia Antica, part 2
From the Theatre to the Forum
In Part 1 of my Ostian wander I meandered from the Necropolis along the via Ostiense as one approaches from Rome (and indeed from the entrance to the site). I described a wander along what was once the route of the Tiber, past a bath complex for cab drivers and the ghosts of once bustling warehouses, which leads to the hub of the port’s mercantile dealings at what was termed in the early twentieth century the “Piazza of the Corporations” as far as the Theatre. There we left the applause of modern concerts and bawdy ancient comedies echoing through the ether, bouncing off the marble seating.
It is useful to know that there is both a loo and a café just along from the Theatre at the end of the asphalt road (which more or less follows the ancient route of the river), and that the small Museo Ostiense in that cluster of buildings was reopened earlier this year and is lovely and very well displayed.
Just by the café recent tree pruning to create a new cycle path gives a view of the river, which once flowed alongside the decumanus and which abruptly took a shortcut away from the site following a storm in the sixteenth century leaving Ostia landlocked.
However, for the purposes of our wander, we are returning to a small room adjacent to the theatre; an intriguing reminder of Augustan propaganda. With the cavea of the theatre behind us and the masks in the first photo above in front of you, we leave the theatre to the left.
There a small sacellum contains a copy of an Augustan era altar, the original of which is to be found now on the ground floor of the National Roman Museum at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome.
On the front the altar shows Romulus and Remus, and the she wolf, together with the eagle of Jupiter and the shepherd Faustulus who brought them up. On the sides we see allusions to Venus on one side and Mars on the other: the ancestors not only of Romulus, founder of Rome, but also of Augustus himself, who presented himself as having “refounded” the city and established the Pax Romana after decades of civil war.
From here the decumanus maximus, the main drag, is a short walk. Dotted along this section of Ostia’s main road a plethora of buildings connected to collegia once abounded. A collegium, literally “society", was a grand institution with a professional, social, or religious function, or sometimes all three. A sort of Ostian Pall Mall, lined with gentlemen’s clubs. Bearing right from the theatre one such example is directly on the opposite side of the decumanus.
