Yesterday was the first of what is planned to be a three visit cycle of trips. In order for students to get more out of it, the school was divided into three groups of approximately 20 students each. One group explored ancient history (forum/Colosseum/Palatine), a second explored art at the Vatican Museum and the third group went to an activity with an American faculty member. The ancient and art trips will be done each time and every student is expected to do them on one of the three trips to the city. The third activity is led by a different person each time and thus changes. The first activity was planned and executed by Amy with the tiniest bit of help from me tagging along. She opted to take all of her upper level, Latin students to Ostia Antica for the day.
Pompeii and Herculaneum are known as the places you can go to get a first hand glimpse of what it might have been like to live in ancient Rome. There are very few sites that offer such a peek. Another is Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) in Tivoli. This is the ruins of a HUGE palace of the emperor Hadrian. A third is Ostia Antica, the former port town of Rome, situated at the mouth of the Tiber River some 12 miles from downtown Rome and accessible on the Roma-Lido line, a small train line which is included as part of the transit system. It costs a Euro each way to travel to the site from Rome. Ostia differs from Pompeii in a number of important ways. Pompeii was buried essentially instantaneously. Thus, it offers a snapshot of life as it must have been, complete with dogs and people curled up and buried by the ash from the eruption of Vesuvius. Ostia suffered a different fate. Over time, the mouth of the river became silted in and thus difficult for barges to navigate. This resulted in a pair of man-made harbours being constructed a few miles up the coast with a canal to connect them to the Tiber a few miles closer to Rome. When an earthquake caused the course of the Tiber to shift somewhat dramatically, it reduced the importance of the city even further. Over time, Ostia was abandoned, then nature took over and buried it deep under sand dunes for hundreds of years. Ultimately, the ruins were rediscovered, excavated and they are now open to the public. While most of Pompeii is closed off to the casual visitor, very few places in Ostia are off limits, making it the perfect place to spend a gloriously sunny day with a group of excited, boisterous teenagers.
Ostia was actually the first colony of Rome. It dates from hundreds of years BC, although much of what remains and is visible now was constructed in the first few centuries AD. What most people don't realize is that the Romans had a basic blueprint for a city which was copied to some extent almost everywhere they settled. There were certain elements which were expected to be in place. Ostia is old enough that not all of the blueprint was followed exactly, but much if it IS present making it a fantastic learning opportunity.
The first thing you encounter after you enter the archaeological site is the necropolis. Below are the remains of some sort of a crypt with niches on the walls for cremated remains. Romans both cremated and buried the dead, depending on the time period. On display along the road are a number of sarcophagi as well.
The Roman cemetery was always outside the city gates, and Ostia was no different. Ostia had three main entrances and as you continue along the road you then enter the city through the remains of Porta Romana. Shortly after that you encounter the remains of a HUGE bath complex. There are at least three public bath complexes in the city and wealthy citizens would have had their own private baths at home. The bath was essentially the health club. It was expected that all citizens, even the poorest, would have access to the baths. Below is a picture of the baths. It is easy to see the black and white tiled floor, complete with a mosaic pattern of sea creatures and the god Neptune. For that reason these are referred to as the Neptune Baths.
Every Roman town had a theater and Ostia was no different there either. The semi-circular theater would have seated approximately 4000 people and the show area could even be flooded to provide for water spectacles. Though not an amphitheater like the Colosseum in Rome, it provided the same opportunity for entertaining the masses.
At the end of the theater there is a merchant square set up around a temple. Ostia was an important point for the entry of goods into Rome and, indeed, all of Italy. The square is lined with what were once buildings. These weren't shops and cargo would have been stored in warehouses in other parts of the city. Rather, they were the official offices of the shipping merchants. It is interesting, because the floors were done up in mosaics indicative of the type of business being transacted. Thus, the mosiacs below of an elephant, deer and boar probably indicated that the shipper who was quartered there did business importing animals, exotic and otherwise, which might have been used in spectacles in the arena in Rome.
Other bits of the city which have been identified are somewhat more mundane. Below is the fulling mill, i.e. laundry. Fullers cleaned clothes. There are large pools for soaking clothes at various stages of the cleaning process as well as vats around the edge which slaves would have stomped around in compressing and cleaning the clothes. Fulling was smelly, hard work. One of the smells was from urine which was collected from public toilets and used to bleach clothes.
Below is a grist mill. The upper piece would have been turned by animals or slaves to grind grain against the bottom piece. It was set up close to a bakery.
Then there are the public toilets. Those keyholes are for sitting and doing your business which would have dropped into running water in the trough below. The channel in front would be for collecting the urine for use in the laundry. Toilets were communal and Romans would think nothing of sitting and holding a conversation with their neighbor while toilet slaves would hover nearby with a sponge on a stick to be used in the cleaning up process. Apparently, the sponge wasn't cleaned between successive usings. Too much information, I know, but teenagers love this stuff - you have to trust me on that.
Another common feature was a forum where all important civic business was transacted and where there was always a capitolium temple. The inner skeleton of the temple is quite intact at Ostia, but the portico of columns which would have been in front of it is nearly entirely gone save for the steps up to the platform.
One reason I really enjoy going to Ostia is all of the mosaic work. The really intricate floors, such as in the Baths of Neptune and around the Merchant's Square, are off limits except for looking. However, there are any number of places where you can simply walk in and be standing on a mosaic tile floor which is nearly 2000 years old. Most are black and white tiles, but occasionally you find one which is colored, such as the one below in an out of the way temple.
The other thing I really like about Ostia is that there is never a crowd. During the height of the summer tourist season there could be as many as a hundred or so people. Which sounds like a lot until you realize the site covers many acres. Yesterday there were perhaps a dozen people other than our group and we walked for several hours through the ruins while only occasionally catching sight of another visitor off in the distance.
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