[4][6] The exhibition area occupies four of the floors from which the building consists, the other rooms being reserved for offices of the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma.

The museum houses the "ancient art section" with figurative works from the late republican, imperial and late antique periods on the ground floor, first and second floors (including works of art from the great residences of the senatorial order, with Greek originals brought to Rome in ancient times) as well as a "numismatics and goldsmithing section" on aspects of the Roman economy in the basement.

According to recent studies, however, it seems that the statue depicted Magna Mater-Cybele, an ancient Anatolian deity whose main center of her worship was Pessinus in Phrygia and who, beginning in the Second Punic War, began protecting the Romans.

[8] The stern and strong-willed portrait proves the spread of the Egyptian cult in Rome, often opposed by the nobilitas, eventually imposed in the capital by the association of Isis with the goddess Fortuna.

[9] Also in "Gallery I," one finds the center of a mosaic floor of a Roman villa (Tor Bella Monaca, Rome), which depicted an episode from the Argonauts myth, in which Hylas, the young companion of Hercules, draws water and a Nymph is about to drag him into the spring.

[9] In "Room II," the exhibition continues chronologically and shows images between the Caesarian and Augustan ages, when alongside the realist tendencies are found the new classicist one, especially sought by Octavian Augustus.

[15]Finally, there is a painted frieze, coming from the Esquiline and found in 1875 in the area of the Porta Maggiore square, which depicted a small columbarium of the powerful family of Titus Statilius Taurus.

The scenes depicted are 38 cm high and are bordered by a dark red band and divided into several episodes, starting with Aeneas, the meeting between Mars and Rhea Silvia, and the birth of the twins, Romulus and Remus.

[24]On display in "Room VIII" are a number of masterpieces from the workshops of Neo-Attic sculptors (from the 2nd century BC), ready to put them on the market for the refined Roman collectors of the nobilitas.

[22] This phenomenon of assimilation of Hellenistic culture manifested itself with the elaboration of new architectural perspectives and a new taste for decorating the dwellings of private citizens of the most prominent gentes of ancient Rome.

[22]The first floor is reached by a wide staircase where statues (copies or reworkings from Greek originals) of the most important deities of the Roman-Greek religion from the villas of Latium are displayed in some niches: Jupiter, Apollo, Dionysus, and Athena.

[28] On display are masterpieces of Roman statuary, from the age of the Flavians to late antiquity, as well as numerous sarcophagi, both pagan and Christian, including the sarcophagus of Portonaccio.

[28][37] Female figures, on the other hand, were shown as models of devotion to their princeps, as in the case of the statue of Faustina the Younger,[38] daughter of Antoninus Pius and wife of Marcus Aurelius.

[45] "Room VII" is an area devoted to divine figures, which, always used in villas and town houses, were intended to illustrate cultural values and the pantheon of gods of ancient Greece, but also the joy of life, as in the case of the African Acrobat, the Flautist Satyr, a naked Apollo[55] and one in citharist costume,[56] the Artemis armed with a headless quiver,[57] Dionysus in the guise of Sardanapalus (from the Appian Way and probably derived from an original from the late 4th century BCE.

),[59][60] Athena, Pan, Crouching Venus (marble copy from the bronze original by Doidalsas), the Eros archer by Lysippos (Villa dei Quintili on the Appian Way),[61] a Thetis with a triton,[62] and finally the Sleeping Hermaphrodite.

According to the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, he was a boy of great beauty who was transformed into an androgynous being with a dual sexual identity through a supernatural union with the nymph Salmacis.

One example comes from the villa at Torre Astura, whose statue represents an actor masquerading as Papposilenus, the father of the Satyrs, a guide in the theater (in satirical drama).

They were used for the emperor's feasts and banquets, showing unrestrained pageantry of the time, and were connected to a villa that Caligula had on the lake (formerly belonging to Gaius Julius Caesar),[67] adjoining the Latian shrine of Diana Nemorense (the seat of the Latin League dissolved in 338 BC).

Regarding the bronzes that have come down to us: a balustrade supported by small pillars adorned with Dionysian herms, some animal heads (four wolves, three lions, and a leopard), and a Medusa.

[65] Since the Flavian era and then throughout the second century CE until the Antonine dynasty, one of the main themes of Roman art were the victories achieved by its generals over barbarian nations along the imperial borders (limes).

[70] All the scenes illustrate the virtutes of the deceased (possibly Aulus Julius Pompilius Titus Vivius Laevillus Piso Berenicianus), who stands in the center of the sarcophagus in the act of fighting against the barbarians.

On the elevation of the lid, on the other hand, four scenes from the deceased's life are engraved that also celebrate his virtues: the presentation of the newborn to his mother; his education and sapientia (due to the presence of the Muses); marriage and concordia; and the clementia reserved toward the barbarians.

The sarcophagus must have been the tomb of a Roman general engaged in Marcus Aurelius's Germano-Sarmatian campaigns of the years 172-175,[70] and is perhaps the finest example of private sculpture of the second century,[73] with influences related to the trends of the Aurelian Column.

[72]Exhibited along "Gallery II" are a number of busts of the consorts of emperors from the 3rd-4th centuries CE, beginning with the Severan dynasty and ending with the period known as the military anarchy (cf.

[74] In the hall is a loricate bust of Septimius Severus in Greek marble from Ostia, which shows remarkable continuity with the image of the Antonines, from whom he claimed descent, to legitimize his own imperial investiture.

[76] The collection continues with a portrait of Caracalla in Greek marble, from the Via Cassia (found in 1948), which instead has a very short beard and shows an early shift toward what was his father's imperial image.

[72][74]The large "Room XIV" displays works ranging from the period of so-called military anarchy (which followed the death of Alexander Severus) to a new recovery of imperial power with Diocletian's tetrarchic reform (284-305) and the establishment of Constantine I (306-337), the latter marking the birth of the Christian empire.

[78] Matteo Cadario also believes that there were important changes in the artistic conception of this period, which he summarizes as follows: Realistic and classicist portraiture were left out with a few exceptions [...], in order to seek the expression of charisma through connection with divinity [...], preferring abstraction to naturalism.

The room displays a series of sarcophagi from the 3rd century: the sarcophagus of the Muses shows the heroization of the deceased through culture, represented by the Muses enclosed within small niches; the sarcophagus of the Annona is in the popular style with symbolic depiction of the trade and distribution of grain (alluding to Flavius Arabianus' office of praefectus annonae), decorated with eight figures in relief against the background of a parapetasma (curtain), with two spouses celebrating the dextrarum iunctio in the center, above a small altar; the sarcophagus of Acilia, which, in the figure-portrait of the youth, has been recognized as Emperor Gordian III (238-244), according to the identification of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, while other scholars, with less persuasive arguments, recognize the youth Nigrinian, son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius Carinus, or a personification of the processus consularis.

In the other rooms are a series of wall and floor mosaics, late imperial megalographies, the panels with pompa circensis and "Hylas abducted by nymphs" from the so-called basilica of Junius Bassus, the frescoes from the "river port of St. Paul" and the section of frescoes found in the underground rooms of the "villa or house of the Farnesina" (as it was located in what were the gardens of the Villa Farnesina built by Baldassarre Peruzzi for Agostino Chigi and later razed in the late 19th century to allow the opening of the Lungotevere).