Ostia Antica - Sunday

We meet at the Piramide metropolitana station to take the train out to the coast, to Ostia Antica. Before a 16th century flood diverted the Tiber several miles north, before the ocean receded with deposits, fill, and beach, Ostia was the bustling port city and outer stronghold of Rome. No longer a port, the city died suddenly, leaving a well preserved skeleton of houses, necropoli, shops, taverns, baths, mosaics and theaters along the straight Roman road Via Ostiensis.

Before we even enter the city, Reggie has us sitting in the middle of the street near where the tour buses enter. “Open your packets!” he says, “Here we are… the place where Aeneas SOMNIABAT! Somniabat? To dreeeeeeam… Open to Ostia apud Vergilium, the Aeneid books 7 and 8…” All that marks the spot now is an expensive restaurant called “The disembarking of Aeneas.” We sit and read about how Aeneas sees the beautiful tree-lined shore from the Tiber and orders the ships in, disembarks and “PROCUBUIT! “What’s that?? FLOPS DOWN. Aeneas flops down and has a dream, ok, and when he wakes up what does he see? INGENS SUS! What’s that? An ENORMOUS PIG. And here she is, right over there, through the trees. Any of you Latin teachers? You can tell your students I WAS THERE. I was there,” he sings, “where Aeneas dreamed. What more do you WANT?”

The whole city might have well been scribbled with the graffiti of past times – Aeneas was here, Pompei was here, Atticus, Livy, Terentius, Plautus, and St. Augustine were here. At the Porta Romana we read pieces of Cicero’s speech to the senate, requesting them to give power to Pompei to clear out the pirates attacking Ostia. In Fortunatus’s tavern, where a floor mosaic of a blue goblet and the word “BIBE” is still visible, we break open a box of wine and raise a glass while reading a bit of Plautus’s comedy Mostellaria, in which the teenage son of a merchant is throwing a wild party when dad is seen coming home from the port early. (Imagine! Everyone drinking wine out of plastic cups in a spot where wine had been drunk nearly 2000 years before!) We walk tipsily to a temple with mosaics of sacrifices and altars to the gods… (er, I don’t really remember what we read…). After a short trip through the museum, around one o’clock we set up picnic supplies at a stone table underneath a leafy arbor (the first glass of wine having been drunk at about 10am – ablative absolute!). From pockets and backpacks appear cheese, plums, cherries, salami, prociutto e melone, bread, and more wine. (Yours truly was the only one who brought WHAT? Plates, extra cups and paper towels! “The woman’s touch,” said Reggie – one argument, he conceded, against celibacy, or at least a good reason to have a few nuns around.) More wine and more wine, and we’ll reconvene at 3:00. Reggie takes a siesta under the trees while adventurers wander off to explore. (I have a passionate conversation about LOTR.) We reconvene at the theater, we walk through the winding streets, up the antique stairs to second floors of houses looking over mosaic tiled baths. We crawl through basement mithrea, cross thresholds of more taverns, and through another bath, and finally we find ourselves in a garden. In the garden, we are told, where Monica, St. Augustine’s mother, died.

Pull out your packets. Augustine’s Confessiones, Book Nine. You don’t like Augustine, neither do I… you’re not Christian, neither am I, ok? Let’s read. Et cum apud Ostia Tiberina essemus, mater defuncta est. Augustine and his mother, looking out from a window into an enclosed garden, discuss qualis futura esset vita aeterna sanctorum, quam nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascendit (how the eternal life of saints will be, which neither the eye sees nor the ear hears nor the heart of man ascends to). “Well here we are,” growls Reggie, “in that garden. Can you see them? Can you hear them talking?” Further down – Monica awakens from a faint and tells Augustine and his brother to bury her here in Ostia rather than taking her back to Africa, where they had been heading. “Nihil” inquit “longe est deo, neque timendum est, ne ille non agnoscat in fine saeculi, unde me resuscitet.” Nowhere is far from God, nor must I fear that God not know from where to raise me up at the end of times...

And then what does Augustine do? “He takes a BAAAATH…” Reggie says, “next page… Visum etiam mihi est, ut irem lavatum… You see, okaaayyyy? The baths we just walked through. There we are. Do they make him feel better? Noooooooo…. What more do you want my friends, if not this I don’t know… Let’s read it together:

Et inspira, domine meus, inspira seruis tuis, fratribus meis, filiis tuis, dominis meis, quibus et corde and voce et litteris seruio, ut quotquot haec legerint, meminerint ad altare tuum Monnicae, famulae tuae, cum Patricio, quondam eius coniuge, per quorum carnem introduxisti me in hanc uitam, quemadmodum nescio.

And inspire, my lord, inspire your servants, my brothers, your sons, my lords, whom I serve with heart and voice and letters, so that whoever reads this, let them remember at your alter MONICA, your handmaiden, with Patricius, for a certain time her husband, through whom you introduced my flesh in this life, in what way I know not.

“Okaaayyyy… The Confessions of St. Augustine. Okay. Good. Let’s go home.”

******

Some of us take the train to the end of the line instead of returning to Rome. Ten minutes and we’re on the coast. Everyone has gone home for the day and we have the beach to ourselves. We wade in – the sea is warm and the air is cool. I gracefully change into my suit and rush in – here I am! I did it! Into the Mediterranean. Back out, borrow Emily’s towel. Now a little shivery, with sandy feet. We wander back to the station and catch a train to Rome, a bus to Trastevere, and eat pizza and drink wine into the night.

(And now I have a cold to show for it. Oh well.)