The Square of the Corporations

West porticus - statio 50

A Nereid is depicted in a frame in the passage between the front and back room, as in statio 49. She holds a veil over her head and is sitting on a sea creature. She is looking to the right, while the Nereid in statio 49 is looking to the left. Directly below the lower right corner of the frame is a small depiction of a fish. A few horizontal lines below the fish indicate the sea.

Photo: Gerard Huissen.

We may consider the hypothesis that stationes 49 and 50 formed an entity. It is significant that the left Nereid is looking to the right, the right Nereid to the left. The presence of Nereids in stationes 49 and 50 is surprising. They were taken from the traditional, mythological repertoire, and it almost feels as if they have escaped from the neighbouring Baths of Neptune. The stationes are flanked by an office of the province of Mauretania Caesariensis, and by what seems to be an office of the provinces Hispania Tarraconensis and Baetica (stationes 51 and 52). Therefore, 49 and 50 may also have been used by representatives of a province.

Mosaic depictions of the Nereids are found in baths, and in various rooms in houses in North Africa, Spain, and Italy. Their meaning is rather generic and not helpful. However, in ancient literature the Nereids take us to the Greek world, to Greek mythology and to the Aegean Sea. This may therefore have been the office of Achaea and perhaps also the west coast of Turkey. The Nereids may have been chosen because Greece wanted to present itself as a province of art and culture. What obviously hampers this hypothesis is the apparent absence of any relation between Greece and the annona, the food supply. We may think however of the import of marble that was quarried extensively around the Aegean sea.

An alternative explanation is that the offices were used by Sicily, with a reference to motherland Greece. In the Baths of the Trinacria an allusion is found to the square through the inscription, in mosaic, statio cunnulingiorum. The triskeles, symbol of Sicily, is depicted in a mosaic. Perhaps the baths were frequented especially by Sicilians working on the square.