Excavated: 1913 (GdS 1913, 350 (December 22-24, 10 days after the demise of Dante Vaglieri); NSc 1914, 71; Calza); 1970 (Pohl 1987, trenches a and b).
Mosaic: SO IV, 79 nr. 117.
Inscription: CIL XIV S, 4549 nr. 42.
Date: 190-200 AD (SO IV).
Meas. of tesserae: 0.015-0.02 (SO IV).

Photos and drawings:

Front room and back room (dga)

Front room and back room (gh2)

Front room (gh2)

Statio 43 + statio 42 (centre + right) (gh2)

Text (NSc 1914, 71)

Text (bs)

Text (bt)

Mosaic

The floor of the east part of the back room has been preserved. The north side is framed by a black band, four tesserae wide, coming from the passage to the front room. The south side is framed by a black band of the same width. It emerges from the passage, then turns to the south, to be continued to the west. The northern band is lost from the point where the southern band turns to the south. NADIS inv. nr. 644 shows also a north-south running black band dividing the room in two halves.

The floor of the west part of the front room has been preserved. It is framed on the south and north side by a black band, four tesserae wide. To the east of the passage to the back room are two lines of text, not in a tabula ansata.

The text in the west part of the front room is (h. of letters 0.16 and 0.135):

AVIVMD
N

After the N Calza saw part of a second letter (Γ), see drawing. This letter is now replaced by white tesserae. Due to restorations it is not clear how many letters are missing before and after the text.

For line 1 Becatti suggests curatores n]avium d[e suo, which is to be preferred over domini navium, assuming that the wealthy ship owners would be more in the background. For the second line we may think of n(aviculariis) f(eliciter), as in stationes 23 and 24, but I suggest a case of n(aviculari) f(rumentari), such as the genitive. See the section "The auxiliary grain fleet of Commodus".

Suggested reading:

[CVR(atores) N]AVIVM D[(e) S(uo)]
N(aviculariorum) F(rumentariorum)

No depictions have been preserved.

Masonry

The rear wall of the back room is of opus reticulatum. In the east part of the passage to statio 41 is a wall of opus vittatum mixtum B. It is not clear whether it shows the core of the wall at the west end, this should be checked in situ. According to Gismondi's plan the wall continued to the back wall. The back room has at the west end a south wall of opus vittatum mixtum B or rather rubble masonry. At the bottom of the inside corner, at the point from which the floor is not preserved, is a piece of white stone. Below this wall a small piece of mosaic was found (excavations Pohl). The floor of the statio seems to slope downwards to the north, this should be checked in situ.

Interpretation

The statio seems to have been used by the corpus curatorum navium marinarum, possibly stipulating that they were also overseeing the ships of the auxiliary grain fleet instituted by Commodus.