In search of people
The remainder of the area we are exploring was excavated in the years immediately following 1937. Surprisingly only one monograph was dedicated to it, about the Serapeum, by a Spanish team led by Ricardo Mar. Unfortunately it was published in Spanish, which does not make life easier for the archaeologists and historians, who are already supposed to have mastered Latin, Greek, English, French, German and Italian (a monograph about the nearby House of the Dioscures takes the cake: it was published in Catalan). The excavation diaries of these excavations are extremely meagre.
If we wish to get to know the people who lived and worked in this area by name, our main sources of information are inscriptions and graffiti. There are two exceptions. One name is found in a mosaic in a dressing-room of the Baths of the Seven Sages. A naked man is depicted, holding an unidentified object in his left hand. Over his head is the inscription IVLI ❦ CARDI H C E. Giovanni Becatti suggests that we see a caretaker of the baths, named Iulius Cardius. He recalls Epictetus Buticosus, a supposed caretaker of the eponymous baths, also depicted in mosaic. H C E would stand for hic conspicitur effigies: "here an image of Iulius Cardius can be seen". The explanation of H C E goes well with the genitive case, but it has no parallels. And why did IVLIVS CARDIVS not suffice? The normal meaning of the abbreviation is hic conditus est: "is buried here". The text might be ambiguous and the image may have been placed here to show and remember a popular caretaker after his demise. Through the mosaic he would then have been laid to rest forever in his beloved baths and in the minds of his clients.
The depiction of Iulius Cardius in the Baths of the Seven Sages.
Photo: Klaus Heese.The second exception is found in the House of Annius. In the facade two reliefs can be seen (there was a third, but it is lost). The reliefs are very crude, but details were added with red, yellow and brown paint. One shows a man between two dolia (large, round storage jars) and a man behind a counter, on the other relief is a cargo ship. Higher up, below a balcony, are three fragments of an inscription incised in terracotta tiles. The words were framed by tabulae ansatae and filled with pumice: OMNIA FELICIA ANNI, "All the best for Annius!". The phrase is known from mosaics in North Africa and several coins. It is surely justified to think of a connection between the depiction of the storage jars and the presence of a warehouse with 21 such storage jars directly to the north of the House of Annius.
Top. The name Annius in the facade of the House of Annius.
Photo: Jan Theo Bakker.
Right. A mosaic from Dougga in the Bardo Museum, Tunis.
OMNIA TIBI FELICIA, "All the best for you!".
Photo: Wikimedia, Pascal Radigue.The olive oil has led some to link the name Annius to an oil lamp producer who was active in Ostia: Annius Serapiodorus. Ostia has been identified as the place of production, because of the very large number of his lamps found in the city. The lamps were inventorised by Heinrich Dressel in the corpus of Latin inscriptions (volume XV,2 nrs. 6295-6). They carry the stamp ANNI SER, sometimes ANNI SIR. One lamp, for twelve wicks, has the stamp ANNI SERAPIODORI. It was found in the Mithraeum of the Imperial Palace. On the lamps are depictions of Amor, Apollo, Diana, Fortuna, Hercules, Leda with the swan, Minerva, Sol, Venus, gladiators, two men playing a board game, various animals and vegetation, and quite frequently the Good Shepherd. They were produced at the end of the second and in the first half of the third century.
Illustration of oil lamps found in the catacombs at the Via Latina.
From Bosio's "Roma Sotterranea" (edition 1650). Image: KNIR.
An oil lamp from the House of the Millstones.
The Good Shepherd between sheep.
Image: De Rossi 1870, Tav. I,2.The Good Shepherd is a well-known Christian motif. In 1870 Giovanni Battista de Rossi discussed several specimens found in the House of the Millstones (the bakery next to the House of Diana), a building that was consumed by fire at the end of the third century. He developed the rather romantic view that Annius was pagan, but later converted to Christianity. Rodolfo Lanciani proposed, more realistically, that he catered for the needs of both pagans and Christians. This is hardly surprising, if we remember that for all inhabitants of Ostia the use of the municipal undertakers was obligatory, so that the latter must have arranged funerals fitting for the various religious convictions.
In 1828 a funerary inscription was found in Ostia made by an Annius Serapiodorus, erected for his beloved wife Plotia: Dis Manibus, Annius Serapiodorus, Plotie coiugi dulcissime (CIL XIV, 574). It was seen in Rome in the collection of cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca and then disappeared.
