A Monument of the Lares Augusti in the Forum of Ostia

Abstract

Many observant visitors to ancient Ostia must have noticed the remains of a small circular building in the middle of the Forum on the south side of the Decumanus Maximus, the continuation of the Via Ostiensis (Figs. 1-3). It came to light in the excavations of the Forum about forty years ago and was believed by the excavator Guido Calza to be a nymphaeum. Also in his posthumous detailed description of the oldest part of the city, the Castrum, the structure still appears as an ‘imperial nymphaeum.’ It was erected over the northeast corner of a very early rectangular building (Fig. 1 A) dated by Calza at the end of the fourth century B. C. Although the so-called nymphaeum obliterated the part of this building's eastern wall, which it straddles, this structure had been levelled before, when the authorities of Ostia decided to create at the crossing of the Decumanus Maximus and Cardo Maximus, in the center of the ancient Castrum, a monumental square.