Sport held great importance in the ancient world, particularly in Roman society. There was a close connection between personal care practices and those related to sport and athletics.
The place designated for both gymnastic exercises and competitions or training in various disciplines was the palestra. This was typically an open, colonnaded courtyard adjacent to the baths, of which it formed an integral part.
All public bath complexes were equipped with a palestra, and those in Ostia were no exception. The three large public bathhouses commissioned by the imperial administration — the Baths of Neptune, the Forum Baths, and the Baths of Porta Marina — all featured spacious palaestrae. Even smaller complexes, like the Baths of the Swimmer (Terme del Nuotatore), were equipped with a palestra. These were the spaces where running and gymnastic exercises took place.
Given its importance in daily life, the Roman world often provides us with depictions of athletic contests or athletes engaged in various sports disciplines. Without a doubt, the legacy of Greek art — and Greek culture in general — greatly influenced these representations.
The baths were the main locations where such depictions of sport and athletes were found. Often, the decorative furnishings of bath complexes — in Ostia, and even more so in Rome — included sculptures portraying athletes engaged in various disciplines: the discobolus (discus thrower), the boxer, and the Apoxyomenos, the athlete cleaning his body with a strigil after a competition.
In Ostia as well, the baths offer us visual representations of athletes engaged in their sporting activities. But not only the baths: on our tour we will also come across a caupona (a tavern), a residential apartment block, and the headquarters of a professional guild.
Central to our route is the mosaic of the Athletes from the Baths of Porta Marina. It shows several athletes engaged in different sports: boxers, wrestlers, a discus thrower, and a long jumper. There are also two athletes using a strigil to clean themselves after a competition, and in the center of the mosaic is a table displaying prizes and various objects related to athletic practice. Among these, the most striking is a leather ball — in Latin pila lusoria — which bears a remarkable resemblance to modern-day footballs.
