Isola Sacra - Tomb 5 and 6

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Tomb 5 is a small grave with its facade on one line with graves 2, 3 and the original grave 4. The tomb, only reachable via tomb 6, was meant for inhumation only.
Tomb 6 is irregularly shaped and located close to the Via Severiana. During investigations no traces of formae have been found below the floor as in other tombs of the same period.
Whatever the original goal was and why tomb 6 got that strange shape is still unknown. Several older graves were found at a lower level.
Under the facade of tomb 5 archaeologists discovered a tomb "alla cappuccina" from the middle of the second century AD. Other graves were found against the left wall (6b), and in the north-west corner (a tomb "a cassone"; 6a).

 

 

 

Tomb 5 has only one arcosolium in each wall. Below the floor four formae have been found. Each with place for three bodies.
The entrance of tomb 5, reachable via tomb 6, lies approximately 1.60 cms above the floor of tomb 6. Also here, comparable with tomb 6, there probably was a staircase for entering the tomb.
Tomb 6a had an inscription facing the street:

 

 DIS MANIBVS
C(aio) CONSIDIO IANV
ARIO FECERVNT
CONSIDI SECVNDVS
ET BERONICE PAR
ENTI BENE MERENTI

Considius Secundus and Beronice have made (this monument) for Caius Considius Ianuarius, their well-deserving father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In tomb 6a an urn with an inscription on the neck has been found:

D(is) M(anibus)
C(ai) CONSIDI SVCCESSI QVI ET RUFINVS

The ashes of a certain C. Considius Successus, also called Rufinus, was placed here. The name has not been found on the front of the tomb.

 

• 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 Baldassare, Irene Bragantini, Chiara Morselli and Franc Taglietti - Necropoli di Porto, Isola Sacra (Roma 1996).