SC - Ovid's kitchen and dining room reportedly discovered

[Gaylin J. Walli]

I personally *love* reading stuff about food and
archaeology and I thought several of you might like
to read about it too if you'd not already seen it. My
pardon for any duplication.  -- Iasmin, gwalli at ptc.com


Ovid's Rome Villa Reportedly Found

Updated 11:51 AM ET November 3, 2000

By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) - Archaeologists surveying a construction
site north of downtown Rome have found what they
believe was the villa of the Latin poet Ovid, author
of the famed erotic treatise "The Art of Loving."

Uncovered so far are some walls, what seems to have
been a kitchen, and a virtually intact marble mosaic
  covering 60 square feet of a dining room floor.

The mosaic features the multicolored head of a figure
- - probably an attendant to Bacchus, the god of wine -
at the center of an intricate geometric design in black
and white. His eyes look pensively out from under a
laurel crown, recalling Ovid's line: "Wine readies
hearts for passion."

"The mosaic is the only memory that will remain of
the villa," Gaetano Messineo,  one of the city
archaeologists involved the dig, said Friday.

The clue to the villa's identity, he said, is in letters
Ovid wrote in the first century B.C. when he was
living in exile. The homesick poet wrote nostalgically
of his villa overlooking the Tiber River where the
Cassia and Flaminia roads converge - exactly where
the ruins now are.

"It is certainly Ovid's villa - he is the authoritative
source," Messineo said.

The ruins were uncovered as archaeologists surveyed
the construction site, where a complex of buildings for
the city's garbage collection agency will go up.

"If we hadn't been allowed to do preventive digs, they
would have built over it without a thought," said Raffaella
Tione, another archaeologist on the dig.

It is unlikely any more of the villa will be uncovered;
the surrounding area is covered by modern apartment
buildings and streets. But the archaeologists hope that
the mosaic, which is being restored, will be remain visible.

In the end, Tione joked, having the garbage collection
agency nearby might be a good thing. "At least it'll be
clean," she said.