Canal tomb CIsola Sacra Menu

Tomb C is a large tomb with its façade alongside the passage, but at a different angle than tomb A and B. The façade has been preserved till the upper cornice of the wall. Below that cornice was a series of letters, made of tuff, embedded in the bricks of the wall. The only one found in place was the letter D, probably part of the letters:

H(uic) M(onumento) D(olus) M(alus) A(besto)

Let this monument be free from intentional desecration
(As far as we know this is the only case the expression has been used in this way.)

The entrance of tomb C is placed on the left side of the façade.
The jambs and architrave are still in place. Above the entrance on a marble slab of 72 x 61 cms an inscription has been found:
During the Second World War the lower right side of the slab was damaged. The inscription is from the middle of the second century. It gives us the following information:

L(ucius) MINDIVS DIVS
FECIT SIBI ET GENVCIAE
TRYPHAENE CONIVGI
INCOMPARABILI CVM QVA
VIXIT ANNIS XXIIII MENS(ibus) III
ET LVCCEIAE IANVARIAE MA
RITAE ET ANNIAE LAVERIAE CONTVVERNA
LI SVAE SANCTISSIMAE
ET LIBERT(is) LIBERTAB(usque) SVIS POSTER(is)Q(ue) EOR(um)
H(oc) M(onumentum) E(xterum) H(eredem) N(on) S(equetur)
IN FRONTE P(edes) XXX IN AGRO P(edes) XXXXI

Lucius Mindius Dius has built this monument for himself and for Genucia Tryphaena, his incomparable wife, with whom he lived 24 years and 3 months; for Lucceia Ianuaria, his wife, and for Annia Laveria, his most chaste wife, and for his freedmen and freedwomen, and the descendants. The monument cannot be inherited by strangers.
The area measures in width 30 feet and in depth 41 feet.

 

Inside tomb C is a lot of space. In the wall with the entrance are two groups of three niches. Each group consists of one large, semicircular niche flanked by two smaller niches. Above the three niches was one tympanum (now almost completely disappeared). In the top of the large niche was a shell of stucco.
The end of the wall of the façade doesn't have sufficient space for a third group of three niches and is occupied by a large, curved niche and two very small niches with room for only one urn each.
The east wall has one group of three niches and the west wall three. Below the groups of niches are six arcosolia.
Tomb C was once covered by a barrel vault.

Back to introduction Canal Tombs

• Sources
• Russel Meigs - Roman Ostia, At the Clarendon Press 1973
• Guido Calza - Necropoli nell'Isola Sacra'(1940)
• Dr. Jan Theo Bakker.