Famous people in Ostia and Portus: the ancient Greeks
Homerus
During the years 1831-1834 the marquis Pietro Campana excavated in Ostia by order of the bishop of Ostia, cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca. Campana was a collector of antiquities and modern art, and had connections with Napoleon III, Ferdinand II of Naples and Ludwig of Bavaria. His collections were on display in a few museums in Rome, for those with a letter of introduction. Photos of the galleries were made already in 1856. However, his love of art led to huge debts. On 28 November 1857 he was arrested and condemned to permanent exile. The entire collection was then turned over to the Pontifical State and put up for sale. It ended up in museums such as the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
A photo of Campana's Galleria delle Erme (perhaps in the Via Margutta) from 1856.
Photo: Benucci-Sarti 2011, fig. 2.
Nothing can be said about the precise place of discovery of the objects from Ostia. Several objects ended up in the Louvre, among these a portrait of Homerus, purchased in 1861. Many portraits of Homerus are known and little attention has been paid to the one from Ostia.
The portrait of Homerus in the Louvre.
Photo: culture.fr.
Three depictions of Odysseus have been found in the harbours. From tomb 87 on the Isola Sacra necropolis comes a painting of Ajax and Kassandra, Odysseus and perhaps Priamus. In section H of the Domus Fulminata (III,VII,3-4) a painting of Odysseus, tied to the mast of his ship, and the Sirens has been found. The same scene was depicted on a fragmentary mosaic in the Terme del Mitra (I,XVII,2).
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 Left: the painting of Odysseus from tomb 87 on the Isola Sacra necropolis. Photo: ICCD E041152. Top: the painting of Odysseus and the Sirens from the Domus Fulminata. Photo: ICCD E040812. |
Scenes from the Iliad are depicted on the so-called Pianabella sarcophagus: Achilles mourning the dead Patroclus and Achilles with the body of Hector. Parts of this sarcophagus were offered in 1982 by illegal excavators to the Antikensammlung in Berlin. More parts were found in the necropolis to the south of Ostia a few years later, this time during regular excavations. The entire sarcophagus is now in the museum of Ostia.
The so-called Pianabella sarcophagus with scenes from the Iliad, in the museum of Ostia.
Photo: Wikimedia, Sailko.
H. d'Escamps, Description des marbres antiques du musée Campana. Sculpture grecque et romaine, Paris 1862, page 44 with plate.
M. Benucci - S. Sarti, "The Campana Museum of ancient marbles in nineteenth-century photographs", Journal of the History of Collections, March 2011, 1-10.
Themistokles
On July 13 1939 a bust was discovered of an older man, with the Greek text ΘΕΜΙϹΤΟΚΛΗϹ: Themistokles. It caused and still causes quite some confusion among art historians. It can be seen in the museum of Ostia.
The bust was found in one of the rooms of a building that was later named after the bust: Caseggiato del Temistocle (V,XI,2). This Hadrianic building consists of apartments and shops, and is situated on the Decumanus Maximus, to the north of the Terme del Nuotatore (V,X,3), opposite the Quattro Tempietti (II,VIII,2) and the theatre (II,VII,2). The northern part of the building was later occupied by the Tempio Collegiale (V,XI,1), erected at the end of the second century by the builders (fabri tignuarii). The portrait does not seem to belong in the rather modest building (in the same room a large fragment was found of the funeral inscription AE 1988, 185).
The Athenian statesman Themistokles was born around 524 BC and died in 459. He was responsible for the harbour at Piraeus and built up the Athenian navy, used with success in battles with the Persians. He was ostracised however and became governor of Magnesia on the Maeander on the west coast of modern Turkey, in the service of the Persian king Artaxerxes I. After his death he was rehabilitated and viewed as saviour of Athens and Greece. No other sculpted portraits of him have been identified.
 The portrait of Themistokles in the museum of Ostia. Photo: Wikimedia, Sailko. |
 A portrait of Miltiades, found in Rome. Now in the national museum of Ravenna. Photo: Wikimedia, Sailko. |
It was immediately assumed that the bust is a Roman copy of a bronze portrait made shortly before or after the death of Themistokles, around 460 BC, in the period of the so-called Severe Style. It is the realism of the portrait that has led to a constant flow of publications. It does not seem to fit in the Severe Style. As a result the archetype has also been dated to the fourth century BC and even to the Roman period (the portrait was likened to depictions of Emperors from the later third century). It has also been suggested that it is not Themistokles at all, but an athlete, the inscription being an error. Apart from the date, also the place where the original was erected has been debated: was it Athens or Magnesia? And finally the sculptor: could the artists have been Kritios and Nesiotes, the creators of the Tyrannicides?
The early date has won most supporters. The portrait has been called "the first true portrait of an individual European". In 2006 Tanner, dating to around 470 BC, concludes: "Whilst having some features which might echo generic imagery of athletes or their divine patron Herakles - namely short hair, the massive cubic structure of the head, and swollen ears - Themistokles displays features which clearly differentiate him from either the god (most notably features of ageing such as the beginnings of crows' feet at the corners of the eye, the cleft between the eyebrows) or such sculptures of athletes as found in archaic stelai or kouroi: the asymmetries of the upper face (arched brows, left eye higher and larger than the right), the hook at the top of the nose, the jutting chin. The portrait of Themistokles is one of a group of early classical images characterised by such humanising and individuating features, setting an individual apart from gods and marking him out as a particular individual man".
The portrait had thus left the Ostian context, to which less attention was paid. The dates suggested for the making of the copy vary from the late Republican period to the third century AD. Why was decided upon this rather exceptional bust, rather than one of the more popular Perikles?
Margarete Bieber recalls the presence of statues of Themistokles and another leading Athenian, Miltiades, in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. The statues were still there in the second century AD, looking at the orchestra from the left and right. An inscribed bust of Miltiades has been found in Rome. Like Themistokles he is not wearing a helmet. Below his name is an epigram:
He who defeated the Persians in battle in the field of Marathon
Perished through the ingratitude of his countrymen and fatherland.
All, o Miltiades, know of your martial deeds.
The Persians and Marathon are the sanctuary of your heroism.
Bieber suggests that the Ostian bust also stood in the nearby theatre. Riccardo di Cesare regards the portrait as a representation of Themistokles as an athlete (he is known to have joined young Athenians in wrestling). The portrait would originally have been standing in a gymnasium as a dedication to Herakles. Various authors mention the possible association Rome-Portus / Athens-Piraeus, and the military fleet. It is very tempting to think of the theatre as the location of the bust, and of a link with an Emperor. But who? Claudius, Trajan, or Septimius Severus? The latter inaugurated the new theatre in 196 AD, and the inscription calls him great-great grandson of the divine Trajan, conqueror of Parthia (divi Traiani Parthici abnepos).
Some titles from the extensive bibliography are listed on this website under the keyword "Art - sculpture - portrait of Themistocles". To this should be added Raissa Calza, Scavi di Ostia V, Roma 1964, nr. 1.
The quote of Tanner is from: J. Tanner, The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece. Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation, Cambridge 2006, 97.
Socrates
In 1868 Carlo Ludovico Visconti was excavating in the south of Ostia, in the area of the Campus of the Magna Mater. One of the finds from this year is a small bust of Socrates (c. 470 - 399 BC). It is only 16 centimeters high (the height of the actual head is 9 centimetres). It can be seen in the Vatican Museums, in the Museo Gregoriano Profano. The original portrait was made quite late, possibly in the second century BC, while this copy may be from the first century AD. Perhaps it stood in a school.
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The portrait of Socrates in the Museo Gregoriano Profano of the Vatican Museums.
Text below the bust: OST EFFOS MUNIF PII IX P M ANN XII - excavated in Ostia in the 12th year of the pontificate of Pius IX (1868).
Photos: ICCD F005615 and F005616.
In the Imperial period people could be called Socrates. In San Paolo fuori le Mura a funerary poem can be read of Socrates son of Astomachus. It was found near Acilia. Socrates son of Caecilia Maxima was buried in the Isola Sacra necropolis. Caecilius Socrates and Socrates Zoillus were ordinary members of the ship carpenters (fabri navales) in Portus. Quintus Veturius Firmus Felix Socrates was a member of the city council of Ostia (decurio). We encounter him several times, also in a dedication to Gallienus from 262 AD. For Ostia Socrates gains some extra significance, because he is the first to list the Seven Sages of Greece, in Plato's dialogue Protagoras - the Sette Sapienti that were painted in the baths of the same name (III,X,2). These philosophers all lived around 600 BC. The archetypes of the paintings may date back to the second half of the fourth century BC. The paintings belong to the Hadrianic or early-Antonine period. In this period this part of the building may have had a commercial function, only later did it become part of the baths. A description of the building and the paintings, with photos, can be found in the Topographical Dictionary.
The paintings were discussed at length for the first time by Guido Calza, shortly after the excavation in the years 1935-1937, and he immediately addressed the problem of the function of the room. In the lower register of the paintings are people sitting on (presumably) a latrine, but excavation, also of the lower levels, showed that the room itself had not been a latrine. Calza suggests that it was a bar frequented by bohémiens: Montmartre avant la lettre. This view might be supported by amphorae high up on the wall, one with the text (VINVM) FALERNVM, quality wine from the ager Falernus in Campania. The painted, ironic commentary on bowel movement brings Calza to Plutarch's "Symposium of the Seven Sages", written not long before the paintings were made. In this dialogue Solon comments in detail on food, the stomach and the intestines. The soul, he says, is confined in the darkness of the body, but "now that the tables have been removed, we have, as you see, been made free, and, with garlands on, we are spending our time in conversation and in the enjoyment of one another's society, and we have the leisure to do this now that we have come to require no more food for a time". Calza also adduces Petronius' "Satyricon", in which Trimalchio discusses his problems with the bowel movement.
Stephan Mols, taking Paul Zanker's book "Die Maske des Sokrates. Das Bild des Intellektuellen in der antiken Kunst" (1998) as a starting point, says about the paintings: "They can be placed in the time when the traditional philosophers' image was cultivated on the one hand, and in which a lot of criticism on the other voiced against this mostly outward show". Mols also notes that the advice on bowel movements in the captions is written in the meter of the iambic senarius, a very common meter in stage declamation and mime plays. John Clarke proposes that the visitors of the bar belonged to the lower classes: slaves, former slaves and the freeborn working poor. It would be a form of carnival, empowering ordinary, non-elite people - a rather surprising view, given that the paintings and texts presuppose considerable Greek and Latin literacy and education.
The paintings may well have evoked protests. Already in the late-Antonine period they were covered with a thin, new layer, with simple architectural motifs.
The inscriptions with the name Socrates: CIL XIV, 256, 352, 431, 432, 480; CIL XIV Suppl., 5357; Thylander A48.
Translation of Plutarch: Frank Cole Babbitt, The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, Cambridge-London 1928, section 16.
Petronius, Satyricon, chapter 47.
Hippocrates
In 1938 many fascinating discoveries were made in a Trajanic-Hadrianic tomb in the Isola Sacra necropolis of Portus, commonly known as the tomb of Iulia Procula. One of the finds was a bust, which according to Giovanni Becatti represents Hippocrates of Kos, the father of medicine (c. 460 - c. 370 BC). Paolino Mingazzini replied that it was Pindarus, but his view has won no supporters, because of strong circumstantial evidence. First of all, the tomb was built by a Greek physician, C. Marcius Demetrius, archiatros, and his wife Munatia Helpis (Iulia Procula was a daughter of Munatia Helpis from an earlier marriage). Then there is a shaft carrying a Greek inscription beginning with the words "Life is short" (ΒΡΑΧΥC Ο ΒΙΟC), the first words of a famous aphorism of Hippocrates, known in Latin as Vita brevis, ars longa. The rest of the text differs from the aphorism: "Short is life, but long is the time that we mortals spend beneath the earth after death. To all is given part in the divine fate, whatever it be". Furthermore the name Iulia Procula is found on a portrait statue representing her as Hygieia. And finally there is a resemblance with a portrait of Hippocrates on a coin from Kos. The original portrait will have been made in the third century BC.
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 The portrait and herm of Hippocrates in the museum of Ostia. Photos: Wikimedia, Szilas and Lalupa. |
Hippocrates could literally haunt later physicians. In his Philopseudes ("The lover of lies") Lucianus wrote: "Thereupon Antigonus, the physician, said: 'I myself have a bronze Hippocrates about eighteen inches high. As soon as the light is out, he goes all about the house making noises, turning out the vials, mixing up the medicines, and overturning the mortar, particularly when we are behindhand with the sacrifice which we make to him every year'."
Galenus (129 AD - c. 200/216 AD), one of the leading doctors and medical writers of antiquity, mentions Ostia and Portus. In one of his works he discusses the limits of Hippocrates' medical experience. He notes that Hippocrates only saw the commonest form of dislocated shoulders, not a rare abnormal form. He then says that he saw only four cases of the abnormal form, but none in "the harbour of the city near the harbour which they call Ostia". He adds that "all the doctors in those places are my friends, and both are populous centres". Galenus was court physician of Marcus Aurelius and, during a plague, may well have been one of the doctors who advised Commodus to retreat to the Imperial villa in the Laurentine territory to the south of Ostia.
Two terracotta reliefs attached to an Isola Sacra tomb (number 100) show the medical profession. We see a doctor at work, M. Ulpius Amerimnus, carrying out a surgical operation on a patient's leg. The other relief shows his wife at work, Scribonia Attice, a midwife delivering a baby. A relief of a midwife from Ostia is now in the Science Museum in London. It was acquired together with a statuette of Hygieia. The sarcophagus of a physician from Portus can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He is reading a scroll. His surgical instruments stand in his open instrument case upon a cabinet at the right.
Detail of the sarcophagus in New York. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A few inscriptions from Rome document medici attached to the cohorts of the vigiles, so these must have been active in Ostia and Portus as well. In Ostia a funerary inscription was set up by Onesimus, medicus, and his wife Iulia Faustilla, for their son who died at the age of 10. In the Ostian Serapeum a Greek inscription was found of Titus Statilius, iatros. From Portus comes a funerary inscription of L. Caesennius Crescens, medicus, who died at the age of 30. We know of one physician from the harbours who had joined the army. His name was Marcus Rubrius Zosimus. He put up an inscription on the Limes Germanicus in castrum Nemaninga, modern Obernburg, situated on the river Main to the south-east of Frankfurt. It was reported for the first time in 1769, next to Gasthaus Zur Krone, later called Zum Ochsen, Hauptstrasse 234, to be precise. It is now in the nearby museum of Aschaffenburg.
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I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) APOLLINI ET AES CVLAPIO SALVTI FORTVNAE SACR(um) PRO SALVTE L(uci) PE TRONI FLORENTI NI PRAEF(ecti) COH(ortis) IIII AQ(uitanorum) EQ(uitatae) C(ivium) R(omanorum) M(arcus) RV BRIVS ZOSIMVS MEDICVS COH(ortis) S(upra) S(criptae) DOMV OSTIA V(otum) S(olvit) L(ibens) L(aetus) M(erito) |
| Inscription CIL XIII, 6621 from Obernburg, in the Stiftsmuseum Aschaffenburg (inv. nr. 185). Photo: B. Rémy - P. Faure, Les médecins dans l'Occident romain, Bordeaux 2010, fig. on p. 158. | |
The inscription is on an altar of red sandstone. It is a dedication to Jupiter, Apollo, Aesculapius, Salus and Fortuna. With the altar Zosimus redeemed a vow after the recovery of Lucius Petronius Florentinus, prefect of the fourth part-mounted cohort of Aquitanians, Roman citizens. He added that he came from Ostia: domu Ostia. And he also visualised that: on the left side of the altar is a depiction of Fortuna between two horns of plenty, on the right side a depiction of Neptunus, standing on a round base, with a trident in his right hand and a dolphin in his left (below the left hand seems to be a bird). Surely Neptunus is a reference to a statue on a column in the harbour of Portus, which can be seen on the Torlonia relief and on a mosaic in the Caseggiato del Mosaico del Porto (I,XIV,2).
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| Neptune on the right side of the altar. Photo: museum.com. |
Detail of a mosaic in the Caseggiato del Mosaico del Porto. Photo: Scavi di Ostia IV, Tav. 161. |
Bibliography: see the keyword "Art - sculpture - portrait of Hippocrates".
SO V, nrs. 6, 7; Meiggs 1973, 87, 233-234, 468, 563-564; McCann 1978, 138-140; Nutton 1969, 96; CIL XIV, 468 and 471; IG XIV, 943.
Translation of the Greek text on the shaft: Eve d'Ambra 2006, 82.
Lucianus: Philopseudes 21. Translation A.M. Harmon.
The quotes of Galenus: De humero iis modis prolapso quos Hippocrates non vidit, edition G. Kühn, Vol. XVIII, pp. 347-348. Translation: Russell Meiggs.
Demosthenes and Alexander the Great
In the harbours two portraits have been found of Demosthenes, the famous orator who lived in the fourth century BC. One comes from Ostia, the other from Portus. The former was found on the terrain of the aristocratic Aldobrandini family, to the north of the excavations. The latter is much damaged because it was used as building material in the bishop's seat (episcopium). It has been argued that the portrait from Portus is a copy of an honorary statue on the agora in Athens, erected perhaps around 280 BC. The portrait from Ostia on the other hand has been called a result of "mass production", and - in the words of Raissa Calza - made by an inexperienced craftsman rather than an artist, at the end of the second century AD. Art historians can be particularly harsh in their judgements, calling portraits "of little value", "worthless", and so on. To what extent their opinion corresponds with that of the viewers in ancient times remains an open question.
 The portrait of Demosthenes from Ostia. Photo: ICCD E027143. |
 The portrait of Demosthenes from Portus. Photo: ICCD F005900. |
It is easy to understand why two portraits of the orator were discovered in the harbours. Throughout the Imperial period literature and the art of rhetoric were the core of the education of the ruling class, including the Emperor. Communication with the Emperor was therefore based on the skills of the orator, either in person, or in the form of petitions, which were received by members of the Emperor's staff called a libellis. On a relief from Ostia from the late fourth century we may see an orator in action, with his audience and scribes. It has also been suggested that he is a Christian teacher however.
 Relief of an orator (or perhaps a Christian teacher) found in Ostia. Photo: ICCD E049915. |
Demosthenes had a tremendous reputation. "Every schoolboy," wrote Juvenalis, "prays all through his holidays for eloquence, for the fame of a Cicero or a Demosthenes. Yet it was eloquence that brought both orators to their death; each perished by the copious and overflowing torrent of his own genius". Demosthenes had tried to keep Athens independent from Macedonia during the rise of Alexander the Great. Alexander demanded his extradition, but did not pursue the matter. After the death of Alexander, Antipater, his successor, again demanded the extradition of Demosthenes, who then committed suicide on the island of Poros. Years later the Athenians honoured him with an honorary statue.
We encounter Alexander the Great twice in Ostia. First of all a painting of him has been preserved in the Shrine of Silvanus, part of bakery Caseggiato dei Molini (I,III,1-2). It was made shortly before April 25th 215 AD (the accurate date is provided by a graffito). Alexander was depicted here as a sort of alter ego of Caracalla, who had left for the East in 214 AD and then started identifying himself with Alexander. The historians Herodianus and Dio inform us that all of a sudden he "became" Alexander. He also ordered the erection of statues that should show the likeness between himself and Alexander. According to the ancient historians such statues could also be seen in Rome, sometimes strange hybrid depictions of Caracalla and Alexander. Some people in the bakery had apparently acted upon Caracalla's orders. The example for the painting was "Alexander with the lance" made by Lysippus, the personal sculptor of Alexander. The Ostian artist added a nimbus, a symbol of apotheosis.
 The painting of Alexander the Great in the bakery. Photos: ICCD E040761 and Jan Theo Bakker. |
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Then there is a portrait, stolen in 1958 (it may show up in an auction one day). It seems to be unfinished and is 21 centimeters high. It comes from Ostia, but there is confusion about the precise place of discovery. Raissa Calza suggests that it was made by a local sculptor as late as the fifth century AD. Especially the very large eyes are proof of the late date.
Alexander has remained a legendary hero for a long time. He was for example depicted on so-called contorniates: bronze medallions from the fourth and fifth century, linked to chariot races and theatrical performances. Andreas Alföldi suspects that they were New Year's gifts, distributed as a means of anti-Christian, pagan propaganda by members of the Senate. On the contorniates are also depictions of early Emperors and famous people from the past, such as Homerus, Solon, Euclides, Pythagoras, Socrates, Sallustius, Apollonius of Tyana, and Apuleius. Around 400 AD the church father Johannes Chrysostomus reproached inhabitants of Antiochia who were wearing amulets made of gold pieces representing Alexander the Great.
 The portrait of Alexander the Great from Ostia. Photos: ICCD F009406 and F009439. |
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Raissa Calza concludes her description of the Ostian portrait as follows: "With its poor means the head of Ostia tries to evoke a world that is no longer his, but which lives unconsciously in the aspirations and in the spirit of the time. It is perhaps the last nostalgic effort to approach an ideal type of the past in a new world".
SO V, nrs. 10, 11 and 13; SO XVII, nr. 23.
Juvenalis, Satires X, 114-119. Translation G.G. Ramsay.
Chrysostomus: Ad illuminandos catechesis, II 52: Quid vero diceret aliquis de iis, qui carminibus et ligaturis utuntur, et de circumligantibus aerea Alexandri Macedonis numismata capiti vel pedibus?
Solomon
In the mithraeum of the Casa di Diana (I,III,3-4) we encounter pater Marcus Lollianus Callinicus. Perhaps it is the same Callinicus, mentioned in a graffito, who was in charge of a hotel in the neighbouring Casa di Giove e Ganimede (I,IV,2). On a few occasions he was acting together with a certain Petronius Felix Marsus, and together they dedicated a depiction of the Persian deity Arimanius (Ahriman), who played a role in the cult of Mithras as manifestation of Hades. The name Marsus suggests that this individual was a snake-charmer, who was thought to have occult powers. Perhaps information that is better withheld from the many tourists who happily stroll on the road in front of these houses, leading to the Capitolium.
Guido Calza, after describing the Casa di Diana in the Giornale degli Scavi of 1917, mentions a find that is also somewhat disturbing: a magical, bronze amulet, once suspended on a string (diameter 3.3 centimeters). Unfortunately the precise place of discovery is unknown: it was found in a dump resulting from excavations somewhere in this area. On one side is a depiction of a man with the text SOLOMON, on the other the three-bodied Hecate, goddess of magic and sorcery. The man is wearing a long mantle. In his left hand is a lance or sceptre, in his right hand a rod in a cauldron. He might be a magician mixing a magic potion. Two hands of Hecate hold spearheads, two others torches, and still two others flails. At the bottom are two snakes. Various symbols are depicted: the caduceus (the staff of Hermes), a balance, stars, stars with circles at the extremities, stars in circles, an anchor, a (seven-branched?) candelabrum, a P and the Greek letter ξ - symbols with a magical meaning.
 The magical amulet. Left: the three-bodied Hecate. Right: a man and the text SOLOMON. Photo: Boin 2013, fig. 22. |
King Solomon, son of David, was probably a historical figure, living in the 10th century BC. Whether he was really extremely rich and very wise is a different matter. In the late first century AD Flavius Josephus, in his book Jewish Antiquities, wrote: "God enabled Solomon to learn the technique against demons for the benefit and healing of humans. He composed incantations by which illnesses are relieved, and left behind exorcistic practices with which those binding demons expel them so that they return no more. And this same form of healing remains quite strong among us until today. For I became acquainted with a certain Eleazar of my own people, who, in the presence of Vespasian and his sons (Titus and Domitian), along with their tribunes and a crowd of soldiers, delivered those possessed by demons".
Vespasian himself received the gift of healing from Serapis, and could therefore heal a blind and a lame man. Suetonius tells us: "The god Serapis had promised in a dream that if Vespasian would consent to spit in the blind man's eyes, and touch the lame man's leg with his heel, both would be made well. Vespasian had so little faith in his curative powers that he showed great reluctance in doing as he was asked, but his friends persuaded him to try them, in the presence of a large audience, too - and the charm worked".
There is no need to think that the Ostian amulet was made or owned by a Jew: Solomon was well known as a magician also by pagans and Christians.
A fragment of a painting of a man about to strike a child, found in the Caseggiato dell'Ercole (IV,II,2-4), has been interpreted by Maria Floriani Squarciapino as the famous Judgement of Solomon. We encounter Solomon in a much different way on mosaics and marble floors, through Solomon's knot. The sigillum Salomonis consists of two closed loops that have four crossings where the two loops interweave under and over each other. It is found in the Synagogue and in many other buildings.
 The "Judgement of Solomon" from the Caseggiato dell'Ercole. Photo: Floriani Squarciapino 1962, Tav. 134, fig. 1. |
 Solomon's knot in the Synagogue. Photo: Jona Lendering. |
There is much evidence for magic and superstition from Ostia and Portus: amulets found with the dead, curse tablets discovered in tombs, apotropaic mosaics. Astrology was prominent in the cult of Mithras. There was fear amongst the inhabitants of the harbours. When wild animals refused to attack Christian martyrs, the judge said to the onlookers: "Did you see how they tamed the wild animals through magic?". Aurea, the patron saint of Ostia to this day, was repeatedly accused of ars magica by her persecutor: Inducta es ab insania magicae artis! ("You have been led astray by the insanity of magic!").
 Another possibly magical object from Ostia is this lead plate with the letter A and the Egyptian symbol ankh. Photo: Katariina Mustakallio. |
 A bronze phallic amulet from Ostia. Photo: Katariina Mustakallio. |
Another Solomon amulet seems to have been found in a tomb in Ostia: D. Nuzzo, "Amulet and grave in late antiquity: some examples from Roman cemeteries", in Burial, Society and Context (R. Pearce - M. Millett - M. Struck eds.), Oxford 2000, 249-256, page 251. Non vidi.
Flavius Josephus: Jewish Antiquities VIII,2,5 (translation William Whiston).
Vespasian the healer: Tacitus, Histories IV, 81; Suetonius, Vespasianus 7 (translation: Robert Graves).
[JThB - 2-Nov-2020]