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XVI. FROM VILLA OF PRISCUS TO OSTIAN GATE
It’s still dark as you leave the Villa of Priscus behind. The rain has gone and it looks like this will be a sunny day. Back in the rumbling wagon with Darwin and Asconius, you watch the marshy surroundings, and the distant hills, become more and more built up. You doze on and off, until the effect of last night’s wine wears off. You pass through small towns with their stone streets and pedestrian stepping-stones. High walls are overgrown with vines, and those privileged not to labor stand on their porches looking idly down as you pass. They always have a wave or a friendly word for strangers on a busy road like this, as long as they have the safety of their wall between you and them. Those who come forth with smiles and stories and charming gestures are most likely hucksters out to separate you from your money.
Soon enough, the new Aurelian Wall is visible on the horizon. You pass through an endless suburb of farmhouses, gardens, and temples. You begin to see the arches of aqueducts in the distant air—the Aqua Julia, the Aqua Marcia, the Aqua Alexandrina, to name just a few. You glimpse bits of the dead-straight stone highways that include the Via Labicana, the Via Laurentiana, the Via Ardeatina, the Via Latina, and many more. Not far to your right stretches the Via Appia, which is practically an endless cemetery lined on either side with expensive shrines and tombs.
The tallest buildings are stained a cool golden rose-pink as day breaks across the Eternal City. The sky is beginning to gray, and you can see the city skyline now, a magnificent mass of gray shadows below where the first rosy fingers of dawn haven’t penetrated yet, a riot of colors on the upper stories of tall buildings. The Romans did not build pillars and statues in that bleached white most people associate with Classic structures. Those statues have sat out in the weather for millennia, fading in the sun and rain and wind, so they look utterly anemic in your day. Long ago, however, they had clothing made of mixed colors of marble, and precious stones for eyes, which made them look very lifelike.
As you see the heavy security at the city gates, you recall you are renting the body of Meteor, a healthy young 30-year-old man who works as a scribe in a grain warehouse in Ostia. It’s his day off, and the boss assumes he’s at the games in the city. As it is, you need to be wary of being noticed, particularly by the police and by bounty hunters who are always on the lookout for escaped slaves. Meteor is a free-born citizen with a ring on his finger to prove it, and he’s not likely to be noticed much. That’s just how you want it. You came to see, not to be seen.
Not far from here, as you stand on a mooring post while Asconius procures breakfast, you gaze across the Tiber at Transtiberim (‘across the Tiber’). A thick pall of wood smoke rises at an angle from the many factories and tanneries there. That, the 14th Augustan District, is the only area on the opposite side of the Tiber that’s inside the Aurelian Wall. It is a heavily Jewish part of town, consisting of largely working class Jews (boatmen, tanners, makers of copper pails, money lenders, brokers, anything associated with the commerce of the port). There is even a small Jewish hospital on the Tiber Island to the north in modern times, one of two hospitals there. The island at this ancient time is still dedicated to the Greek god of healing, Aesculapius.
Further north across the river is the Mausoleum of Hadrian (and out of sight from your vantage on the mooring post). This round building, which also contains the ashes of Caracalla among other tyrants, is naturally a fortress, and serves the popes as Castel Sant’ Angelo right through the looting, rape, and pillage of Rome by a Protestant army in 1527, and today has papal apartments and offices. That’s just east of the old Circus of Gaius (Caligula) and Nero where St. Peter is buried, and where the sovereign Vatican State will be born in 1929 out of the cold ashes of the old Papal Estates.
You three eat your breakfast, sitting on a mossy stone wall on a little arching bridge over a stream. You’re each having a little libation of watered down fruit juice (Ha! You thought all they drank was wine, but at this hour of the morning? Please!). You use your fingers and little scraps of tasty bread to scoop up rice, shreds of chicken meat, and beans—all of it soaked in garum. The bread is fresh and tasty. It’s torn from a fresh-baked round loaf.
Asconius looks up at dawn, which grays the eastern sky. Rose-colored golden light gleams on the tallest pillars, pediments, and domes. The traffic on the Ostian Road is changing—empty wagons are rolling outward, while lighter carts, horses, and pedestrians continue to flow into the city. Every once in a while you see a litter borne by slaves, accompanied by a detachment of private guards; or, if it’s a state official, a cordon of soldiers with their distinctive uniforms including knobbed helmets, rectangular shields with lightning bolts, and long cloaks.
You start back on the road in your long open wagon where you sit on straw mats and lean against wooden back rests. The sky is beginning to gray, and you can see the city skyline now, a magnificent mass of gray shadows under the first rosy rays of dawn. There’s a riot of colors as sunlight creeps over walls and columns, because neither the Romans, nor anyone else in the Classical Mediterranean, built things in that bleached white most people associate with ancient statues. Those statues (exception maybe those depicting the allegedly blind Greek Homer) were not blank-eyed, but had complex stone eyeballs that glared right back at you. These lovely marble surfaces will sit out in the weather for millennia, fading in the sun and rain and wind, but today they look lifelike with eyes and clothing made of various types of marble and other precious stones. Aside from the common grayish travertine marble used as curb stones and facing on houses, any marble you see here is most likely polished to a deep glow in a riot of colors, from gray speckled with pink through green through onyx black gleaming with green and red speckles. The bulk of the buildings, however, are constructed of brick, tile, or nicely articulated stones.
As you see the Eternal City, you recall your wanderings in 21st Century Rome. Even now, in 285 A.D., the city is about 1,000 years old, built on far more ancient Neolithic settlements. One story is that, before recognizable Latin was spoken here, the previous denizens—who spoke a mix of Oscan, Umbrian, Sabellian, Etruscan, and what have you—called the river Rumo, "river," rather than Tiber. Maybe Romulus got his name from Rumo, and gave it to the city he founded. There is also a suspiciously named town called Tibur (modern Tivoli) some distance inland. As with just about everything involving archaic Rome, the truth is shrouded in mist and mythology. But for the blow of a fist, as Romulus killed his brother Remus while plowing the furrow for the sacred boundary of their future city, Rome might have been named Remoria instead. Hard to imagine if the Tiber were instead the Tivoli. As you said earlier, "Edward." Nonsense.
You have covered about 26 kilometers (16 miles) from the port cities of Ostia and Hadrian’s new Portus. The English word "mile" comes from the Latin word milia (‘thousands’). Whenever you’re dealing with Rome, you’re dealing with the Roman military, and this is no exception. The milia refers to milia passuum, or a thousand paces, which was a standard marching distance. The soldiers have built about 85,000 kilometers (53,000 miles) of roads in the centuries leading up to the time you’re sitting here on this little bridge. A Roman mile is about 4850 feet, or slightly shorter than the antiquated American mile (1.66 modern kilometer). Every Roman mile apart, the Romans dutifully erected a stone marker recording the date and the name of the emperor in whose reign this was accomplished. In Imperial times, the entire system has become anchored by a celebratory Golden Milestone in downtown Rome.
Asconius bids farewell as he starts back to Ostia. You feel more uneasy now that you and Darwin must face the big city alone, but Darwin is resolute. "Don’t worry," Darwin tells you, "we’ll make our own arrangements. I know someone I must look up." Asconius sits in the wagon, as the driver clucks his tongue and starts to bring the horses around. Asconius waves a final goodbye as the driver rounds the Mons Testaceus. "See that hill?" Darwin says. "It’s 100 feet high and at least 300 feet long, made almost entirely from discarded jars. Ships offload amphorae of olive oil and wine here. The cargo is transferred into barrels and other containers as it is carried into the city. The shipping container,meanwhile, the jar, is smashed and discarded in that pile because it can"t be reused, and this is the only economical way to dispose of it."
You continue your trek on foot as the Ostian Way continues a little distance into the city, where it joins the Via Triumphalis.
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