Our group in front of St. Paul's outside the Walls at the end of the day that started in Rome's ancient port and included visiting catacombs.

Today we started by taking the train to Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, came back to Rome and took a bus out the old Appian Way to visit some early Christian catacombs, and then visited the traditional burial site of the apostle Paul.

Ostia Antica

Part of the group at an observation point in Ostia Antica.

Early in Rome's history, in fact, purportedly during the reign of the legendary king Ancius Martius, the early Roman city-state expanded down the Tiber River and reached the sea, where it established its first "colony" building a port between the early course of the Tiber and the original coast line. The name "Ostia" comes from the Latin os, ostis or "mouth," meaning the mouth of the Tiber River. Over the course of the history of ancient Rome, Ostia became a bustling, busy port, serving as the gateway to Rome until the emperor Claudius built a second port, named Portus, north of the Tiber's mouth.

OstiaAntica-SchemaRegioni.jpg, public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Because the remains of Ostia have been so well preserved, the site has sometimes been called "Rome's Pompey." We arrived just as it opened and spent the better part of two and a half hours wandering the site, visiting its tombs, baths, theater, temples, and houses. Open and not crowded, it gave us in many ways a better feel for what like was like in the Roman Empire than the magnificent monuments of the capital itself did.

Here is a fun little video skit that some of our women did, ad libbing the "Hercules Zero to Hero" animated movie:

A well-preserved (and a carefully restored) thermopolium, or "cook house," where hot and cold food and drink was sold to Ostia's citizens.

Here we do a little skit where I illustrate how one of Ostia's food "fast food" restaurants worked, recreating my old "Hunts on Site" YouTube series:

Ostia's Capitolium, a temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva that echoes the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome.

Some of my students look spooked in the grotto of a Mithraeum.

One of the sites we visited was a Mithraeum, or temple to the Persian god Mithras. A god of light whose might was illustrated by his slaying of a sacred bull, the worship was brought to Rome by returning soldiers among whom he was quite popular. The cult of worship included mystery rites, somewhat like those of Eleusis. See these short video clips for a further description:

Catacombs of Saint Sebastian

After breaking for lunch, we took a bus out the old Via Appia, a road originally built by the Roman censor Ap. Claudius Caecus in 312 B.C. Although the old Roman stones have been mostly covered over, the bricks used to pave over it made it pretty bumpy...it almost felt like the original road!

We arrived early for our appointment at the Catacombe San Sebastiano, so we had to walk a bit farther down the Via Appia Antica so that we could see the famous tomb of Caecilia Metella, a noblewoman from a prominent Roman political family who was married to M. Licinius Crassus, one of the richest men of Rome.

We also saw some of the buildings of a summer palace of Maxentius, the rival of Constantine.

We then took a tour of the catacombs that begin and end at the Basilica of San Sebastiano.

No photography is allowed in these catacombs, but I found the following public domain images in Wikimedia Commons:

Papal Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls

Because one of the things that brought us to Rome, in addition of course to the great Classical monuments, is its connection with early Christianity, I was eager to help underscore the role of the apostle Paul (we will be talking at length about Peter when we visit the Vatican tomorrow). To that end, I took the students to the traditional site of Paul's burial, which is commemorated by a massive church, one of the four "special" papal churches that are technically part of Vatican City.