| Show FR E M 0 D E alto iun or HIS ta aara r h fw 4 V S ak va r P Q 1 14 W STIA now that system atla clearance cicar clea anoe ranee has succeeded to OSTIA the spasmodic dellwing dell ving of plo nono and lees less rum caging of yet earlier diggers idaa fas become in certain respect respects the most enthralling of all tho the roman lights it has often been called the pompeii of and certainly it Is the only other place in italy where ramble about the streets of df a town of tho empire no ina ern architecture to intrude on one ones a dream the ruins however differ greatly from those of pompeii because the ancient character and purpose of ostia viero ere different the latter town was a bustling seaport with ith a cosmo politan industrial population neither leisured enough to indulge private ar tastes nor much disposed to ahern the world a capital only a few ew miles distant as the natural homo of ostland of wealth or culture hut but it we cannot see at ostia osta the painted and the courtyards set with statuary which aich make pompeii attractive we can call eee see the frame fram eso eto work of a more vigorous and momentous life which aich ginakes a strong appeal to the imagination of anyone who nho has ever however vague ly what the roman empire meant streets filled pp ap the extraordinarily untouched state in which the ostia of tho the late imperial ago age has been preserved to our lime time Is duo due to two tuo agents sand drift ind and malaria slit brought down to kho he tiber mouth dried pulverized and vind borne has gradually v tilled filled up streets and ruined buildings deserted by men because of tho the fevers favors which were bred from choked up harbors and channels of tho the river partly for tear fear of these fevers partly because civita vecchia was found ultimately to bo be the better port for rome no con elder sid erable ablo population baa has over oer returned to ostia not hoeven een during a temporary revival in the anth century when hen tho the existing papal castle was sas built tho the town had from the first a precarious existence its life was given to it ft by the tiber bajt b it the tl TI her ber could not be trusted the river silted lilted up its harbors one after tho oth er and silted up itself the tho port from which navies sailed to the punic wars ars had become eusebis by the timo time of at augustus and first and trajan after him bad had to dig out now basins at enormous expense come some distance away anay to tho the north and cut connective connect inc ine channels which the river proceeded to silt up aa as of old in the end it proved impossible or not worth orth while to keep any port open into which the main current of the tiber alov lowed ed and it fossa or canal dreiger out anew by pope paul V in the early seventeenth century is still navigable for email craft working up to rome it Is a channel only and ohp huge spreading basins that of ct trajan aa as well as that of claudius are dry just because the river treated these new harbors aa ra badly aa its the old ostia managed to maintain its life and even to develop it for some centuries longer and only in the competition compe titio with civita vecchia a new creation of trajana Tra jans after the empire h has as become christian if it it had no proper basin for alps at K had always the main channel of the tiber flowing past its ta walls and bad passage as its this ot of fored to ships it WM was probably more to be depended on than the claudian Clau dlan or Tra janio janto canala canals therefore we find that in the second aud third centuries A D it was as still worth while to erect great ware houses and ace barrow bada for ships on the river bank and that flourishing guilds whose bushiness bus liness lay jay with shipping existed in ostia such were the tho associations of boatmen Ight ermen and divers whose official records lave been found cut on stone stolle but the importance of the last named 1 Is in itself a witness to the difficult difficulties les against which the port waa was struggling for these divers had neither sponges nor pearls to seek but the cargoes ol 01 vessels which might be wrecked on the dangerous bar of the estuary oi 01 the sand banks of the channel in one way ay or another however ostia kept a leely trade and a polyglot population which bought and arid eoll told la in the serried shops lining its paved streets the religious cults of the place are alone enough to show how variegated ar legated the crowd roust must hive h ave been vulcan the original fiod of the place who had presided pr es 0 over v er it lie a i a et 1 I 1 workers since the days of th early kings as romans loved to believe had had to accept a serious rial in phrygian cybele and other competitors in syrian I 1 and cup ian iris and Seraph ls as well ell as the herbrew ili brow yahweh whose worshipers dwelt thickly about the new now claudian Clau dlan and Tra janic basins wealth and temple temples and all this tills population had to have its places of amusement as well ell as its temples and thero there was wealth enough to decorate these with ith statutory which the gracco roman artists of the metropolis tro polis polls probably p pio bably supplied among the best beat examples that have survived to be found in the recent excavations otis aro are a head of aphrodite and a full tall length of a priestess complete except for the right hand and that nose tip tid which has been chipped off ninety in a hundred ancient statues which still exist she makes a gracious ma cronly figure which atch let us hope did something to tn civilize civil civi lift liza the shrieking levantine Let antIne mob of ostia the main place of recreation the theater built of brick with stone stolle facing in the roman manner Is relatively less well preserved than the shops and bouses houses A big upstanding building it was a more inore obvious and profitable quarry for mediaeval builders nor had it been well treated la ill the imperial times A summary restoration in the time of lio norius did much to ate the more worthy work of the third century emperors tho the clearance ol 01 the city Is still going on year by year at the expense L of the italian govern ment and the absent public Is appt informed of constant discoveries by 1 angileri a reports in the 0 noti flo o deghi the dost systematic and unfailing record which any country issues concerning the recovery of its past but dut no reading of many re ports Is worth orth a lingle visit to the ruins themselves and those visitors to rome who neglect to take the electric line lin to ottia and to spend at least an afternoon in its forum and street streets will nill miss ono of the most place places in italy interesting lna |
