The Square of the Corporations

East porticus - statio 2

The statio was used by the guild (corpus) of the pelliones of Ostia and the harbour district Portus, witness the inscription:

CORPVS PEL
LION(um) OST(iensium) ET POR(tensium)

IE HIC

The first two lines are in a tabula ansata, the third is below it.

Photo: Gerard Huissen.

The pelliones are documented in one inscription from Ostia. The word is usually translated as "furriers", but that interpretation is problematic on the square. Did they make protective clothing for sailors? The name is derived from the word pellis, meaning "skin, hide". It makes much more sense to regard the pelliones here as leather workers: leather was most likely used to reinforce the corners of sails and spots where wear was to be expected, while bands of leather were sewn across sails. This created a checkerboard pattern that can be seen on many depictions of ships.

The third line has always been taken to be an extension of the second: PORTE(nsium) HIC ("... of Portus, here"). IE must then be understood as a faulty modern restoration of TE, and the third line must have been added as clarification and as an afterthought, because it is below the tabula. This can hardly be correct. The first two lines fit perfectly in the tabula, and in antiquity even a child would have understood that OST ET POR stands for Ostia and Portus. No further explanation was needed. Also, in Latin abbreviations usually end with a consonant, so that PORTENS(ium) would be expected.

The letters IE are not easily explained. They could stand for IESVS. His name is also found amongst a group of Christian symbols on a floor in the Baths of Neptune, to the east of the square. It is a lozenge combined with the letters E and S, so that the name IESVS can be read from four directions (the monogram of Saint Peter was found in the mosaic of statio 38). We should not forget that the area directly to the south-east of the theatre was important in the Christian history of Ostia: many Christians were beheaded there, probably in 269 AD. The added letters might be a direct response to that event, which literally took place around the corner, 60 meters away. It may also be noted that the neighbours of the pelliones, the stuppatores, converted their guild seat into a mithraeum in the middle of the third century. Was there some animosity?

To the back wall a triangular marble slab has been attached with the inscription NAVICVLARI AFRICANI. Most likely it belongs to the first half of the second century. It was found somewhere in the east porticus and may originally have been supported by two slender columns resting on a stone base in the entrance of statio 12. The base is in the exact centre of the east porticus.

Photo: Jan Theo Bakker.

The entrance of statio 12. The stone base perhaps supported two slender columns on which the inscription rested.
Photo: Gerard Huissen.