Show eo ilk bior 0 Z 1 V vall R 1 1 1 1 19 af f k v t h A s A its STIA now that systematic learance clearance p has succeeded to U the spasmodic dell dellwing ving of 0 plo nono and less scientific rummaging of yet earlier diggers bag baa become la in certain respects the most enthralling of 0 all the roman sights it has bag often been called tho the pompeii of labium latium and certainly it Is the only other place in italy where one can ramble about the streets of a town of the empire with no mod ern cm architecture to intrude on ones dream the ruins however differ greatly from those ot of pompeii because tho the ancient character and purpose of ostia were different the latter town kowm was a bustling seaport with a cosmopolitan industrial population neither leisured enough to indulge private artistic tastes nor much disposed to them the worlds capital only a few ew miles milea distant was waa the natural home of ostiano of wealth or culture put but it wo we cannot see at ostia the painted rooms and the courtyards set with statuary which snake make pompeii so BO attractive t tf active we can see the tha framework of a more vigorous and momentous life which makes a strong appeal dealto to the imagination of anyone who has baa ever considered however vaguely what the roman empire meant streets street filled pp ap the tha extraordinarily untouched state in which the ostia of the late imperial age has been preserved to our time Is due to two agents sand band drift an and d malaria slit silt brought down to the tiber mouth dried pulverized and w wind ind borne has gradually tilled filled up 6 streets and ruined buildings deserted by men because caus e ot of the fevers which were bred from choked up harbors and channels of the tha river partly tor for fear ear ot of these levers fevers partly because civita vecchia was waa found ultimately to be the better port for rome no considerable sid erable population has baa ever returned to ostia not even during a temporary revival in the fifteenth century when the ex existing isling papal castle was built the town had from the first a precarious existence its life was given to it by the tiber but the tiber could not be trusted the river silted up its harbors one after tho other and silted up itself the port from which navies sailed baided to the punic wars arm had become by the time of augustus and claudius first and trajan after him had to dig out new basins at enormous expense some distance away to tile the north and aad cot cat connecting channels which the river proceeded to silt up as aa ot of old in the end it proved impossible or not worth while to keep any port open into which the main current of tho the tiber flowed and it if Tra trajano jans fossa or canal dredged out anew by pore pope paul V in the early seventeenth century la is still navigable for small craft working up to rome it to is a c channel only and the huge spreading basins basing that ot of trajan as well as aa that of claudius aro are dry just because the tha river trea treated t these now new harbors as badly as the old ostia managed to maintain its ita life hie and even to develop it for some centuries longer and only succumbed in the competition with civila vecchia a new creation of trajana Tra jans after the empire has become christian it it h had a d no proper basin tor for ships it had always the main channel of the tha tiber no flowing wing past its walls und and bad passage as this ot of fared to ships it was probably more to be ba depended on than the claudian Clau dlan or Tra Trajan JanIc lc canal therefore we find that in the second and ichird third centuries een A D it was still worth orth while to erect great warehouses and long narrow sheds for ships on the river bank and that nourishing flourishing guilds whose bus bushiness liness lay with shipping existed la in ostia oatta such were the associations of boatmen lighterman ligh termen and divers official records tave have been found cut on stoie but the importance of f the tha last named to la in knelt itself a witness to the difficulties against which the port was struggling for these theno divers davera had bad neither sponges nor pearls to seek but the cargoes of vessels which might be wrecked on tho the dangerous danger oua bar of the estuary or tho the sand banks of the channel la in one way or another however ostia kept a lively trade and a polyglot population lattOn which bought and sold in the serried berried shops lining its paved streets the religious cults of the eare are alone enough to show how bow variegated the crowd must have been vulcan the original god of the place who had presided over its metal workers since the days of the early kings as romans loved to believe had had to accept a serious rival in phrygian cybele and other competitors in syrian Ali thras and egyptian iris and seraphim Seraph ls as well as the hebrew yahweh whose worshipers dwelt thickly about the new claudian Clau dlan and Tra Trajan janle lc basins wealth and temples Tem plea and all this population had to have hav its places of amusement as well as it its temples and there was wealth enough to decorate these with which ahe iravea caraco nom domn n artists or the arne metropolis tro polis polls probably supplied among the best examples that have survived to bo be found in tho the recent excavations are arc a head bead of aphrodite and a full length of a priestess complete except for the right hand and that nose tip which has been chipped off ninety in A hundred ancient statues which still exist she makes a gracious matronly figure which let us hope did something to 0 civilize the shrieking levantine mob of ostia the main place blace of recreation the theater built of brick with stone facing in the roman manner Is relatively less well preserved than the shops and houses A wg big up upstanding standing building it was a more ob obvious and profitable quarry f for or media mediaeval eval builders nor had bad it been well treated in the imperial times A summary restoration la in the time of llon lion orlus ortus did much to obliterate the more worthy work of the third century emperors empei ors the clearance of rio fro city Is still going on year by year at the expense of the italian italia government and the absent public public Is kept informed of constant discoveries by signor signer reports report in the hotl ale deall the most systematic and unfailing record which any country issues con concerning ce aning the recovery of its past hut but n no 0 reading of many reports is worth a single visit to the ruins them themselves selve 0 and al 1 d those visitors to items home who neglect negle c t t to 0 take the electric line to ostia and to spend at least an afternoon in its forum and streets mill miss mias one of the most interesting places in italy |