For establishing the location of the Forum Vinarium the quadriga is the hinge. We have seen that the quadriga was located in Portus. The same must be true for the Forum Vinarium in view of the link between the two in the funerary inscription of Gnaeus Sentius Felix. If on the vessel from Gaul we may indeed read [FO]RI VI[NARI] below the quadriga, then there was a close physical connection between the two.
The forum was in Portus at least from the second century. We have already discussed a possible earlier history of the forum (see the comment on inscription Q). There might have been a wine forum in the old town that was moved to Portus. It is also possible that a wine forum in the harbour of Claudius was demolished by Trajan, who transferred one or more sacred objects from it to Ostia, possibly to the Temple of Bona Dea near the Porta Marina. Trajan then rebuilt the forum as part of his new harbour. A third possibility is that the square was constructed ex novo by Trajan or Hadrian. Inscription Q is then later than the first century and will have to be explained in a different way. There is no obvious solution for that; it is most unfortunate that the inscription is so fragmentary.
It is tempting to think that the precise location of the quadriga and the square was indirectly established by Lanciani and confirmed by Keay and his team, not by pinpointing their location, but by establishing the location of the temple of Liber Pater. We might assume that the temenos of the temple was the Forum Vinarium, and that the temple of Liber Pater was the temple of the Forum Vinarium. Those who entered the hexagon of Trajan were then confronted with a colossal, cuirassed statue of Trajan, behind which were the forum and the temple, flanked by warehouses for wine, and with the quadriga nearby. The quadriga may then have been located behind the temple and the forum (no geophysical work has taken place there). In Ostia an arch erected by Caracalla in 216 AD is in a similar position, behind the Piazzale delle Corporazioni and the theatre.
In 1858 Charles Texier reports two square foundations at the point where the Claudian moles begin to curve: "on reconnaît un massif de 45 m. de dimension en tous sens, sur lequel j'ai trouvé un grand nombre de fragments de marbre; je suppose qu'il était occupé par un petit temple" ("one recognizes a massif measuring 45 m. in every direction, on which I found a large number of marble fragments; I suppose it was occupied by a small temple"), and: "à une distance de 960 m., j'ai retrouvé un grand massif semblable au premier" ("at a distance of 960 m., I found a large massif similar to the first") (Texier 1858, 30-31; the temples can also be seen on Texier's plan). According to Meiggs the foundations would have been appropriate for arches (Meiggs 1973, 159). They are however much too large for triumphal arches.
Reconstruction of the north-east quay of Trajan's hexagon. Image: Portus Project.
