Vatican Museums

This painting, which was found in 1865 in columbarium 31 of the Ostiense necropolis along the Via Laurentina, depicts the loading of foodstuffs onto a boat for river transport (navis caudiacaria) named Isis Geminiana, as can be read on the right of the boat, and belonging to a Geminus or Geminius. At the stern the helmsman, Farnaces magister; Abascantus supervises a person who empties a bag of produce (res) into a modius, a measuring container used for dry goods; at the fore there is another person, seated beside a modius on which the word feci is written, giving orders to two transporters on the gangway holding other sacks of grain on their backs. It belongs to the successive decorative phase (first half of the third century A.D.) of the tomb, built in the second half of the first and the beginning of the second century A.D., and adorned the left wall, alongside a figure of Mercury that has not been conserved. On the back walls there was the scene of a banquet, now in the Gregoriano Profano Museum (cat. 10786).