Il sistema portuale di Antium: realtà vs fantasia

We examine the article by L. Chioffi, Antium romana e i suoi porti, tra epigrafia e iconografia, which consists of an attempt to reinterpret the third pier of Nero's port on the basis of a mosaic fragment with a naval scene. Through the erroneous reading of that iconography, the author proposes to interpret the so-called Molo Panfili of Anzio as the residual testimony, in which she identifies a pier built as opus pilarum, of a port older than the Neronian port facility. The absolute inconsistency of the reasons given, based on the distortion of literary, epigraphic and archaeological sources, makes the proposal completely irrelevant and misleading and indeed reaffirms the interpretation given at the time of Molo Panfili as the third eastern Neronian pier, hitherto unrecognized as such and destroyed in the last century.