Tomb 78Isola Sacra Menu

Tomb 77 is a tomb without an enclosure. On both sides of the entrance are still traces of a biclinium. The facade is built of small red bricks, the back wall in opus reticulatum. The inscription is missing. We can see, however, the place where it was attached. Next to the place of the inscription is another depression, once holding a relief, probably depicting the profession of the tomb owner.

 

The burial chamber has arcosolia in the lower parts of the walls and large, semicircular niches flanked by smaller ones in the upper parts. Below the niches we still see marble plates on which once the name of the deceased were written.
The burial chamber itself was richly decorated. In several small niches we still see red poppies on a white background.

 

 

 

  

 

 

In spite of the heavy damage of the upper part of the central niche in the back wall, it preserved a painting of the three Graces (museum of Ostia, inv. nr. 10044). The central niche on the right wall had a painting too. A nude, dancing male with a floating mantle was painted on a yellow background (museum of Ostia, inv. nr. 10041). According to Calza, a large irregular crack was found in the central niche in the left wall during the excavations. This was probably made by tomb robbers in antiquity. The crack destroyed the decorations in that niche. Brick stamps found in this tomb are going back to 123 AD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Sources
• Russel Meigs - Roman Ostia, At the Clarendon Press 1973
• Guido Calza - Necropoli nell'Isola Sacra'(1940)
• Dr. Jan Theo Bakker.
• Hilding Thylander - Inscriptions du port d'Ostie (Lund C W K Gleerup 1952).
• Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Chiara Morselli and Franc Taglietti - Necropoli di Porto, Isola Sacra (Roma 1996).