Abstract
The Garden Houses complex at Ostia is an urban development consisting of apartments, shops, and gardens, planned and executed around A. D. 128. Extensive on-site study and measurements of the major formal elements and their spatial relationships provide evidence for a recurrent geometrical pattern which is found at successive scales from urban planning to painting and mosaics. This particular geometric operation is based upon concentric regulating squares subdivided in such a manner as to perpetuate itself ad infinitum. Converting metric dimensions into Roman feet reveals a particular whole number progression related to this geometry and meaningful in ancient mathematics and philosophy. Analytic diagrams explain this geometry and its application to the Garden Houses. The repetitive geometric system creates a ritualistic environment focusing and expressing the Roman conception of social and spatial order in a mathematical model of life.
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