Research and Conference Trip: Rome – Ostia – Pompeii

My previous visit to Italy had been more than a year ago, so it was time to head back there in early November. I had several good reasons for my trip. I was going to participate in a conference on ancient identities, where I'd present a paper related to my research. In addition to this, I was going to visit a couple of archives to advance my research on Ostia and to explore two recently opened private houses in Pompeii that contained material that was of interest for my doctoral research. My trip was funded by Svenska Kulturfonden and the Finnish Institute in Rome. I'm thankful for their support.

I flew to Rome early on Monday morning on 6 November, and immediately headed to the BiASA archive at the Palazzo Venezia in the center of Rome, hoping to examine materials related to the late 19th century excavations in Ostia. I had confirmed in advance via email that the materials should be available. However, upon reaching the archive I was informed that the archive room I was looking for was only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would have to come back the next day. Calculating that I would have time to return to the archive on Tuesday afternoon, I spent the rest of the day exploring the center of Rome and returned to my accommodation early to catch up on sleep.

A moment of reflection after my unsuccessful visit to the BiASA archive

I had arranged a visit to the archives in Ostia on Tuesday morning to study materials related to my research on the theater of Ostia. This visit went as planned. I had been to Ostia a couple of times before to read excavation reports from the early 20th century (previously in my blog: Searching for the Theatre of Ostia in the Archives). This time I mainly verified some details in the reports and supplemented my notes.

My visit to the archives of Ostia was more successful.
You can see me almost smiling.

I returned from Ostia in the afternoon and hurried back to the BiASA archive. However, this time I was told that the archive room I wanted to visit was only open until two o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it was already half-past two. The members of the staff tried to find a solution, and I was asked to wait for a moment. Soon, a person whom I understood to be the director of the archive arrived. She wanted to know what was going on and why I hadn't contacted her in advance. I tried to explain this with my poor Italian. After some discussion and animated gesturing and sighing, she reluctantly agreed to let me into the archive. Two very friendly archivists helped me find the material I was looking for, which turned out to be much more extensive than I had imagined. I examined some late 19th-century photographs and a watercolor painting of the theater of Ostia and realized it would be better to come back at a more suitable time.

At the BiASA archive in the tower of Palazzo Venezia

With Jasmin and Maria at the Porticus Octaviae

On Tuesday evening, I met my fellow researchers Maria and Jasmin, and we went for aperitifs and dinner. We had all come to Rome to participate in the Arachne IX conference entitled "Gender, Identities, and Social Structures in Greco-Roman Antiquity". The conference was organized by the Nordic Arachne network, founded by Finnish and Swedish researchers interested in ancient gender studies. Most participants were from Finland and Sweden, but there were researchers from many other countries including North America and Australia.

Wine reception at the Swedish Institute in Rome

Keynote lecture by Marjatta Nielsen at the Finnish Institute in Rome

The conference was mainly held at the Swedish Institute in Rome, but we also had the opportunity to visit the temporary facilities of the Finnish Institute in Rome. During the conference, we heard presentations on gender ideals, the status of women in antiquity, aging, professions, and ethnic identities among many other topics. I presented a paper on the Roman attitudes towards disreputable professions such as gladiators, actors, and prostitutes.

Me presenting my paper. Photo: Iida Huitula

After the conference on Friday, I took a train to Naples. I had planned to visit Pompeii to see two private houses that had recently been opened to the public after extensive restoration. These houses contain material relevant to my research. I was at the gates of Pompeii early on Saturday morning, rushing straight to my first destination, the so-called House of the Vettii. There I studied wall paintings and inscriptions likely related to prostitution conducted in the house. Similarly explicit paintings have been found only in a handful of Pompeian houses.

The peristyle garden of the House of the Vettii

The backroom decorated with explicit wall paintings,
perhaps a space for prostitutes to conduct their business.

A graffito advertising the services of a woman called Eutychis,
scratched on the wall of the entrance to the house.

Priapus, the god of fertility, painted on a wall near the entrance.

My second destination was the so-called House of the Silver Wedding, one of the largest private houses in Pompeii. It is also one of the few houses where numerous graffiti are still visible on the walls. Many of these are sexual insults and therefore important for my research. I knew the location of some inscriptions, but I had to search for others. A few enthusiastic custodians of the house helped me in my search. We found at least two phallic drawings.

The atrium of the House of the Silver Wedding

A graffito phallus on the wall of the peristyle.
The drawing is only a few centimeters wide.

This room that opens to the peristyle garden has
about a dozen graffiti still visible on the walls.

Calling someone a fellator

It was very enlightening to see these scribblings with my own eyes in their original environment. Many of them were written on the walls of a room located on one side of the large peristyle garden (see the photos above). This room was perhaps used as a dining room, which makes you wonder who wrote them in that particular place and why. As I explored the room, many passers-by stopped to stare curiously at me while I worked. I had conversations with some of them about the wall inscriptions, including a local archaeologist and an American couple.

The Forum Baths were open to the public again.
The photo is from the tepidarium, one of the warm rooms.

Many tourists visit Pompeii with guides whose expertise is not always impressive. During this visit, I heard one guide telling their clients that probably at least 10,000 people died when Pompeii was destroyed. Researchers usually estimate around 2,000 victims. Another guide claimed that the great brothel of Pompeii had thousands of graffiti on its walls. She may have exaggerated on purpose. Only some 120 inscriptions have been documented in the brothel. I also had to correct the archaeologist I met in the House of the Silver Wedding, who claimed that at least 90% of the inscriptions were obscene. Only a few hundred of the over 10,000 graffiti documented in Pompeii contain indecent language. Reality is sometimes less sensational than we would like to imagine.

For the first time I got to climb on top of one of the towers of the city wall.
The view is to the south towards the forum.

Before my trip I had applied for permission to access the storerooms of the Archaeological Museum of Naples to study wall inscriptions stored there. However, the museum never responded to my request, so I had to come up with other plans for Sunday. I took a bus to the western end of the Bay of Naples to visit the archaeological site of Baiae, which was a popular vacation spot for the Roman elite. There I saw the ruins of imperial-era baths, among which is the oldest surviving dome built by the Romans. The acoustics in this round room, later filled with water, were incredible. I also visited the archaeological museum located in a castle built on a hill by the bay in the late 15th century.

The archaeological area of Baiae consisting of multiple baths built on the slopes of a hill

The domed space probably originally served as a frigidarium, a cold bath.
The room has later become partly submerged due to seismic activity.

On Monday morning I returned to Rome by train, where I spent a few hours wandering around the city. In the evening I flew back to Finland satisfied with a successful conference and research trip.

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Searching for the Theatre of Ostia in the Archives

I travelled to Rome again this summer to do some research, but this time not for my PhD. I'm a member in a research team at the Finnish Institute in Rome. My research in this project focuses on the theatre of Ostia, the ancient harbor town of Rome.

It felt odd to return to Rome after a year of being away. We spent the spring of 2020 at the institute with our team, and now we were all together again. This time, however, all the museums and libraries were open and we could move freely about the city. Now we could access those resources that we missed the last time because of the outbreak of the pandemic. So I headed to Ostia to see the excavations and visit the archives there.

Ostia in the summer of 2021. The theatre is in the background.

The focus of my research is on the theatre of Ostia in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. How long was the theatre maintained and the public spectacles offered at Ostia? What happened to the building after the spectacles ended? We know that the theatre was used for theatrical shows at least until the end of the fourth century CE. But what happened to the theatre after that? During the slow decline of Ostia the theatre fell into disrepair and collapsed at some point. Some of the material from the theatre was probably reused elsewhere. I've been looking for answers to these questions at the archives of Ostia.

The theatre of Ostia in 1894
(photo: British School at Rome, Thomas Ashby Collection, neg. 251)

When the theatre was excavated in the late 19th and early 20th century all that was left was a heap of ruins. This can be seen in photos from the time of the excavations. The theatre in its present-day shape is the result of 20th century restorations. During these restorations many of the late antique and medieval structures were cleared away. Ancient materials were often used in the restorations which sometimes makes it difficult to tell which structures are original and which were restored.

The theatre of Ostia in 2018

This means that we have to search for the original appearance and the lost parts of theatre through archival research. Luckily, there are photos from the time of the excavations, which show much that was later removed or that is now hidden by the modern restorations.

Here is one example: There were originally two shops on either side of the central corridor of the theatre. In the fourth century CE these shops were converted into cisterns by closing the doorways with brick walls and adding waterproof mortar on the interior walls. Water contained in these cisterns could be led to a basin in the orchestra, where actors or dancers performed in water-themed spectacles.

The facade and the central corridor of the theatre in 1890
(photo: Archivio Alinari, ACA-F-006985-0000)

The walls that closed off the shops and many other traces of the water spectacles were removed during the 20th century restorations. These walls can be seen in the photo above. Still visible in the theatre are the openings in the walls of the central corridor. Through these conduits the water was led into the corridor and from there to the orchestra.

Such photos from the time of the excavations at Ostia can be found in many archives in Italy and elsewhere. (A few links to online resources at the end of this article.) One of the most important ones is the photo archive at Ostia, which was one of my main destinations during my stay in Rome. It was a refreshing change to dig into the archival cabinets and leaf through the photo cards instead of just sitting at my computer. I had never been at the archive before, so I didn't really know whether I'd find anything that I hadn't already read about in other sources. Now I can say that much of what found will be useful for my research. You'll get to read more about it once my article is published.

At the photo archive of Ostia.

When Dante Vaglieri was the director of the excavations at Ostia between 1908 and 1913 wide areas of the city were excavated, among them the rest of the theatre and its surroundings. (The interior and the scene of the theatre had been excavated during the 1880's.) Vaglieri's assistant Raffaele Finelli wrote detailed diaries of these excavations. With the help of the diaries we can follow the progression of the excavations and what was found almost day by day. These diaries (Giornali di scavo) are kept in the archives at Ostia where I got to study them.

These diaries make up one or two large volumes for each year. During the first few years the diaries were written by hand. The style of the handwriting varies – sometimes it changes in the middle of a paragraph – which means that it wasn't Finelli alone who wrote the diaries, but perhaps his assistants together with him. Later Finelli got a typewriter, which makes the task of a modern reader slightly easier.

Diary from 1910: date, number of workers, location, and a description
of the excavations and finds. Click the image to enlarge.

These diaries are mostly quite tedious to read, but there are some interesting details that tell us about the conditions at the excavations a hundred years ago. The diary entry from January 22nd 1910 (in the photo above) mentions that on that day the works were halted due to strong winds. At other times it was because of a heavy rain. On Saturday February 5th 1910 the workers were on strike because they weren't given a raise. The matter was settled the following day and the excavations continued. At times a lack of funds forced Vaglieri to lay off a large part of his workers. During some periods the excavations went on seven days a week, while sometimes it's mentioned that they didn't work on Sundays or on holidays.

I had time to study the diaries for just a few hours on one day. I went through and photographed as much as I could and read the material later. Reading the diaries it becomes clear just how badly the theatre was damaged in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Most of the theatres decorations were gone and collapsed pieces of the theatre were found all around the theatre. Some of the bigger ones were left where they were found and where they can still be seen, but most of the material could not be salvaged and was cleared away.

A large piece of the theatre's facade, left where
it was found during the excavations.

The theatre was one of the most prominent buildings in Ostia and an essential part of the public life of the city. It still fascinates both tourists and scholars. My research is still unfinished and my search for the theatre in the archives will continue. I will travel to the Finnish Institute in Rome again next week to work on my PhD thanks to a one year long grant awarded by the Foundation Institutum Romanum Finlandiae together with Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. This gives me the chance to continue my research on the theatre of Ostia as well.

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Thank you to Parco Arceologico di Ostia Antica for giving me access to the archives, and to the staff for your guidance and help in finding the materials I was looking for.

Photos: Joonas Vanhala (unless otherwise noted)

Online collections with photos of the excavations at Ostia:

• American Academy in Rome: http://dhc.aarome.org
• Archivio Alinari: https://www.alinari.it/it/
• British School at Rome: https://www.bsrdigitalcollections.it
• Deutsches Archäologisches Institut: https://arachne.dainst.org
• ICCD: https://dati.beniculturali.it/applicazioni_/applicazione-fotografico/
• Ostia-antica.org, Virtual Museum: https://www.ostia-antica.org/vmuseum/vmuseum.htm

A bibliography of the research on the theatre of Ostia by Jan Theo Bakker: ostia-antica.org

Some important studies on the theatre of Ostia:

• Calza, G., Il teatro romano di Ostia, Rome, 1927. ostia-antica.org
• Cooley, A., "A new date for Agrippa's theatre at Ostia", Papers of the British School at Rome 67, 1999, 173–182.
• Gallico, S., "Il 'restauro' del teatro romano di Ostia Antica: Ideologia di un ripristino", in Saggi in onore di Gaetano Miarelli Mariani, ed. Sette et al., Rome, 2007, 511–520.
• Gering, A., Ostias vergessene Spätantike: Eine urbanistische Deutung zur Bewältigung von Verfall, Wiesbaden, 2018.
• On the theatre p. 87–106
• Gismondi, I., "La Colimbetra del teatro di Ostia", in Anthemon, Scritti in onore di Carlo Anti, Venice, 1954, 293–308. ostia-antica.org
• Meiggs, R., Roman Ostia, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1973. ostia-antica.org
• On the theatre p. 420–425
• Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità, ostia-antica.org
• On the theatre see especially volumes from 1880, 1881, 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1913. Specific pages can be found in the bibliography at ostia-antica.org under Lanciani and Vaglieri.

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