Archaeology | Architectural Elements | Facing Elements | Gully hole | Artwork profile

White marble

h. 80 cm; w. 105 cm; d. 7 cm

Mid I - III cent. AD


Report

Gully hole

Marble gully hole centrally decorated by a circle, bordered by a fillet, enclosing four elongated petals placed around a button carved in relief. The gully hole was probably part of a monumental fountain, placed on the pavement in connection to the drain of the terminal basin, a necessary device which let the water in excess flow down, as shown by some reconstructions in ancient Ostia.

It is difficult to set the object in a specific chronological frame, even though the use of marble for increasingly monumental architectonic decorative elements was given a strong impulse in Augustan age and its use continued in the following centuries.