Excavations in 1800
At the end of the 18th century pope Pius VI - much of the area was owned by the Vatican - gave permission to foreigners to search for antiquities amongst the ruins. The objects that emerged were taken to the Vatican or sold abroad. One of the foreigners was Robert Fagan, a British painter of Irish descent. Fagan carried out extensive searches in Ostia and the area to the south. A mithraeum was even named after him, which he had found near the mouth of the Tiber (the precise location is still unknown). The lives and work of people like Fagan and his famous colleague Gavin Hamilton are stories in their own right. Fagan's death, in Rome, was announced in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1816 (October, page 377): "He had been for several months affected with melancholy; and his death was caused by his throwing himself out of a window". He had fallen into debt.
Top. The remains of the Baths of the Seven Sages, drawn by
Giuseppe Verani in 1804. Image: Scavi di Ostia I, fig. 11.
Right. Self-portrait of Robert Fagan with his wife, Maria Ludovica Flajani,
made in 1803. Photo: Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland.In 1802 the Italian archaeologist Carlo Fea describes the discovery by Fagan of two statues in the famous Round Hall of the Baths of the Seven Sages: "In 1800 four or five statues were found, two small torsos, a column of 'giallo antico' and lead. A round building was discovered, not very large, which was claimed to be a temple, with columns and a floor of black and white mosaic, figured with different animals. In the middle, on the pedestal, inclined among the ruins, was found a naked figure with a chlamys on the left, larger than life, with his own head, but broken, covered with a helmet, and partly missing arms, which for a certain resemblance - that it has as a whole and in the beardless face - with the Achilles of the Villa Borghese, was given his name; although it has no sign on the leg, like the other one, and with an inscription at the base in not very beautiful letters MARTI. But certain reasons, or views of mercantile speculation of the moment called for that predicate, and the panegyrics were also echoed, first and foremost, by the Gazettes of Paris and those of Italy. Beautiful, and more worthy of praise is another statue six palms high, claimed to be a Genius, but which is of Ganymede, in the attitude of that of the Pio Clementino Museum, with a chlamys on the left shoulder, with a bare head, short hair, except for a long lock, which in the middle of the head falls loosely behind his neck. With his legs crossed he is leaning against an empty tree trunk, through which some water rose, which with ingenious invention perhaps fell into a vase held by the left hand, missing the arm, just as the right arm is missing. The head is his, and attached: the legs are also his, but broken in several pieces. In the middle the trunk is inscribed in mediocre characters more than half an 'oncia' high: ΦΑΙΔΓΜΟΣ in which the Γ engraved by mistake of the artist instead of the Ι, should not present a difficulty for us to read the name Faedimus, who is perhaps the sculptor."
The Round Hall of the Baths of the Seven Sages.
Photo: Wikimedia, Matthias Kabel.We have a drawing of the first statue, but the present whereabouts are unknown. It was sold to Frederick, 4th Earl of Bristol and Lord Bishop of Derry. His collection of Roman antiquities was dispersed soon, mostly outside Britain. The corpus of Latin inscriptions (CIL XIV, 31) adds: "after Fea and Guattani nobody saw it either in Italy or in Britain".
The statue of Achilles (?) with the inscription MARTI.
Image: Guattani, Monumenti inediti per l'anno 1805, Tav. XVIII.The second statue is today in the Vatican, in the Museo Chiaramonti, and in a description of the objects in the museum published in 1820 we read: "This statue was found by Mr. Fagan in his excavations at Ostia, where it still existed in its niche adorned with mosaics, and served as an ornament to a calidarium of ancient baths. The pierced vase of which was a sure indication, and the more the hole that entirely pierces the adhering trunk ascertains, that it must have been used as a spring, and the somewhat worn plant clearly points to the dripping of the water that flowed there".
The restored statue of Ganymede (or Narcissus?) in the Museo Chiaramonti.
Photo: Romapedia.The ruins of Ostia are sometimes described as bare. However, finds like these, taken together with the remains of mosaics and fortunate remnants of paintings, help us to create a mental image of the extraordinary decoration of some of the buildings. The visitor of Ostia is not confronted with extensive remains, as is often the case in Campania, but must look for the details. One such detail is the polychrome mosaic decoration of a small arch in the Round Hall, the second arch from the left on the photo above.
Remains of a polychrome mosaic on an arch of the Round Hall.
Photo: Jan Theo Bakker.
