You hear a lot about Pompeii and Herculaneum, but there is also a very cool Roman city that is very well-preserved and that can be easily reached using public transportation: Ostia. Ostia was Rome's big port city (although the shoreline has receded a bit since then), and the site contains many buildings and items of interest—so many that it would take several visits to the site to really feel like you'd seen everything.
Ostia is particularly exciting for people who study Roman baths because it contains many of them (Pompeii only has a handful, comparatively). The Baths of Neptune have lovely floor mosaics, which are still in place.
One of the most interesting things about Ostia, though, is its preservation of artifacts of multiple religious traditions in the area. It preserves an ancient synagogue and there are some churches on the outskirts. Our guide led us to one Mithraeum but said that there are several more. Mithras was a Persian god who was particularly popular with Roman soldiers and who was worshiped via a mystery cult—you had to be initiated. Most images of Mithras are small and have very standard features, but the one we saw at Ostia was larger and more unusual-looking.
For the record, images of Mithras usually look more like this:
If you will look carefully, Mithras is still sacrificing a bull in this image, but he has some animal friends to help him, including a dog, a snake, and a scorpion. Yes, the scorpion is pinching the bull's testicles. That bull does not get to die with dignity, sorry to say.
The highlight of our day in Ostia, however, was our time spent in the Amphitheater. Participants were encouraged to perform there together, which led to great things. Two of my friends, roommates with a love/hate relationship, redid some Sonny and Cher lyrics to create "I Hate You Babe." Another hero performed an amazing rendition of the monologue from Gladiator. Then we all sang a Disney song together, because everyone knows the lyrics to those! It was a really fun moment together that we'll be grinning about for years. And even though we got some weird looks, we didn't feel too bad about it—we'd spent the morning in the wake of a German tour group that seemed to spontaneously burst into song in places that were decidedly not theaters.
I would have liked to spend more time in Ostia. Maybe one day I'll get my chance.
Ostia is particularly exciting for people who study Roman baths because it contains many of them (Pompeii only has a handful, comparatively). The Baths of Neptune have lovely floor mosaics, which are still in place.
One of the most interesting things about Ostia, though, is its preservation of artifacts of multiple religious traditions in the area. It preserves an ancient synagogue and there are some churches on the outskirts. Our guide led us to one Mithraeum but said that there are several more. Mithras was a Persian god who was particularly popular with Roman soldiers and who was worshiped via a mystery cult—you had to be initiated. Most images of Mithras are small and have very standard features, but the one we saw at Ostia was larger and more unusual-looking.
For the record, images of Mithras usually look more like this:
If you will look carefully, Mithras is still sacrificing a bull in this image, but he has some animal friends to help him, including a dog, a snake, and a scorpion. Yes, the scorpion is pinching the bull's testicles. That bull does not get to die with dignity, sorry to say.
The highlight of our day in Ostia, however, was our time spent in the Amphitheater. Participants were encouraged to perform there together, which led to great things. Two of my friends, roommates with a love/hate relationship, redid some Sonny and Cher lyrics to create "I Hate You Babe." Another hero performed an amazing rendition of the monologue from Gladiator. Then we all sang a Disney song together, because everyone knows the lyrics to those! It was a really fun moment together that we'll be grinning about for years. And even though we got some weird looks, we didn't feel too bad about it—we'd spent the morning in the wake of a German tour group that seemed to spontaneously burst into song in places that were decidedly not theaters.
I would have liked to spend more time in Ostia. Maybe one day I'll get my chance.
2 comments:
What?! No solo? -mom
Ostia sounds great.
Post a Comment