Plenary Address: Ports, Ships, and Power in the Roman World

Author(s): Geoffrey Rickman

Source: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes , 2008,
Vol. 6, The Maritime World of Ancient Rome (2008), pp. 5-20
Published by: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40379294

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 Plenary Address

PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD

Geoffrey Rickman

1979 I was privileged to take part in the conference held here in the American Academy in
Rome entitled "The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome." That was twenty-four years ago,
and it is an honor to be invited to participate again in this conference on "The Maritime World of
Ancient Rome," which seems to me to be an even bigger subject. Of course, at the age of seventy
I know less, and am less certain of what I do know, than when I was forty-six. Then I talked about
the grain supply of Rome under the Empire.1 This time I want to talk more generally about Roman
ports and their maritime world, on which I started to work from the early 1980s - work much
interrupted since, I might add - though, as you will see, the role of grain in this world still preoc-
cupies me. I offer a sort of general meditation on our theme, perhaps provocative, perhaps rather
dull. My aim is to give an overview of our subject as I see it, without a mass of detail (and without
illustration), to pave the way for the more specific contributions by others that are to come over
the next two days.
If one looks at the history of the study of Roman ports, one quickly gets a measure of the great
difficulties that are involved and of the exciting possibilities. The earliest studies tended to con-
centrate on one port, such as Dubois (1907) on Puteoli or Jondet (1916) on Alexandria, and they
can still have great value. Only rarely was there an attempt to cast the net wider, as with Columba s
Iporti antichi della Sicilia (1906) or the even earlier work by De Fazio in the 1820s and 1830s on
harbors in the Bay of Naples. Sometimes such work grew out of a desire to improve contemporary
port design and construction, or even the feasibility of reviving an ancient port for modern use, as
in 1835 with Carlo Fea and the Neronian port at Anzio (Antium).
It was Lehmann-Hartleben (1923) who made the first proper academic study of ancient harbors
in general in the Mediterranean. This remarkable work, discussing and cataloguing some 300 or so
harbor sites in the Greek and Roman world, is now naturally out of date. It relied for its evidence
essentially on ancient literary sources, combined where possible with travelers' reports of surface
remains that were, or had been, visible. Moreover, as its subtitle revealed, its purpose was to look
at harbors as part of the history of town planning. Valuable though this may be, it is only one of the
many standpoints from which ports and harbors can be viewed.
The nearest thing to a replacement for Lehmann-Hartleben, at least in terms of comprehen-
siveness - though he would, I think, disclaim such an honor - is David Blackman s survey of 1982,
published in two parts in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology . But we see at once when
we read that survey that we are in a different world from that of Lehmann-Hartleben. Blackman,
after all, had to take on board new categories of evidence: the work of underwater archaeology,
opened up by Cousteau and his colleagues after the Second World War, in the 1940s and '50s;2 of

1 Rickman 1980a. 2 Muckelroy 1980.

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6 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

aerial photography, pioneered by Poid

vastly developed since;3 and new work
revealed to be of the utmost significan
tion of ports.4
The range and type of evidence, there
we want to ask quite different questio
much more, in a more sophisticated w
economic history, about administration
Above all, we want to understand prop
on the sea, which has recently been t
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcel
The thoughtful introduction to Anna M
(1987) gave us perhaps the first real id
When I started to think about Roman
ties led me to call for "imaginative co
ports," I argued at the time, "will then
government and society."6 1 later disco
1967 for interdisciplinary and internatio
In 1987, twenty years after that, Jean
du commerce maritime en Mediterranee
we all work - said bluntly in an articl
work of one man" - "un travail enorm
the importance of international gather
So what have we learned so far? I thi
than we thought it was.
Just as Puteoli's port in Campania wa
of the so-called docks studied by Dubo
hortensiana sweeping north to Port
Camodeca's plan;9 so Portus, on which
let, was not just the Claudian and Tra
the river Tiber at Ostia and east up th
south at Centumcellae, Antium, and Te
on either side of the causeway, the hep
lighthouse, but stretched back southw
greater wharves of Lake Mareotis behi
other mouths of the Nile - the river t
Sea, Arabia, India, and the East;11 so C
not just the famous internal double se

3 Poidebard 1939; 7 Chevallier

Poidebard 1967.
and Lauffray 195

4 For example, Davidson and

8 Rouge Shackley
1987, 163. 1976; cf
Mattingly 1999.
9 Camodeca 1994; Frederiks
5 Cf. Malkin 2003; Harris 2005.
10 Rickman 1991.
6 Rickman 1985, 112.
11 Empereur 1998, 214.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 7

shape went back to Punic times, but embraced the vastly wider waters of the Lake of T
closer to the south and east of the city then than now12 - something that makes Carthag
complexity under the Roman Empire much more understandable.
The same pattern can be seen repeated empirewide. Antioch in Syria, 24 km inland
river Orontes, not only had its river docks but a broad lake nearby and a harbor down a
mouth at Seleucia-in-Pieria, as well as a support harbor to the south at Laodicea. A
on the Rhone in Gaul, had access to the sea by river but also by canal, the Fossae Mari
by Marius's soldiers during the Republic, to another outport. Narbonne and Aquileia b
complicated networks of river, the Aude and the Natiso respectively, inland lagoons, an
link up all their port facilities. Something similar can be posited for the setup on the G
in southern Spain from Hispalis (Seville) down to Gades (Cadiz) on the coast.13 The gre
the Roman world could without doubt be extensive, intricate, and complex beyond ou
dreams. They must be thought of as great clusters of facilities, set in wide webs of com
by road and by water.
To some extent this perception is all part of the knock-on effect of the new categor
dence. Underwater archaeology has revealed in a way not previously understood the imp
the sea in the Roman world and the sheer density of sea traffic. We have known, of course,
time that the relative costs and difficulties of transporting goods by land and by water w
in favor of movement by water, and in particular by sea.14 Even so, the density of sea tr
revealed is a surprise. Caution has to be exercised in drawing conclusions and making ge
from shipwreck evidence, as Toby Parker has properly stressed:15 because some areas, f
off the south of France, have been more intensively investigated than others; because s
excavations in the early days, such as those at Grand Congloue, were less expert than they m
been; and because deep sea areas of the Mediterranean are beyond the reach of the Aqua-
operational, I think, to a depth of some 200 feet. Nevertheless it is clear from the more
wrecks so far discovered that in the period from 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 there was an intensity
by sea that was not to be matched again for a thousand years. That is astonishing. It mea
Mediterranean Sea was of the utmost importance to the world of Rome and to its empir
This is not necessarily the impression we would get from reading our traditional sour
exaggerated Roman ignorance of and indifference to the sea. Yet on reflection there are
dicators from the beginning of a different sort of story. From perhaps the sixth centur
had had a series of treaties with Carthage, the great maritime power, which defined am
things where Roman ships might and might not go. There is reason to believe that Rom
sea in the early Republic was more vital than has been thought. In 3 13 B.C. the Pontine
of the keys to navigation in the area, had been occupied, and by 3 1 1 B.C. Rome had cre
fice of duumviri navales "to repair and equip a fleet." In 267 B.C. were added the quaesto
"quaestors of the fleet," stationed in various coastal towns such as Ostia at the Tiber mo
More important still, Rome possessed navalia, a set of docks and shipsheds for her
located at a significant point on the edge of the Campus Martius. Both David Blackma
Rankov are to talk about shipsheds and their role in the Roman world. Ill-informed tho
about Rome's own shipsheds, we know that they already existed by the fourth century

15 Parker
12 Hurst 2002; cf. Lancel 1995, 172-192, esp. 1984; 1992a.
185-188.

13 Rickman 1996. 16 Cornell 1995, 388.

14 Hopkins 1983a.

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8 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

some of the ships of defeated Antium

the second century B.C. Given the asso
of a claim to power, seen most clearly
of navalia is, to say the least, interestin
during the late Republic, a claim to po
attempts by others at maritime domin
Underwater archaeology has provided
all kinds of specific new knowledge, w
cases protected hulls, which can, there
Steffy preeminently - who calls wooden
humankind" - who has shown the imm
shell-first constructed ships, with the
tenon joints, were built almost like fur
drew on a long tradition of shipbuildin
with his extraordinary work on the Ky
fourth/third century B.C. The maritime
and developed it in significant ways. In
the Romans, by wedding frames, and h
and flatter bottoms, and therefore hol
But Steffy is not so obsessed by such
endeavor into which they all fit. He p
always the means to an end and usuall
Immediately we are reminded that in t
types - the needs of war, or, I suppose,
significantly from those of trade and t
have new evidence on this from disco
Andrea Camilli is to speak.
Not just the hulls of ships but the ca
of ship sizes. The French scholars Tch
excavation of the wreck at Madrague d
have written what seems to me the best
this emerges a believable picture of a v
have been the vast majority, to quite l
proven is Lionel Casson's belief that som
to Puteoli could carry as much as 1,200
unconfirmed by underwater archaeolog
wheat as a cargo would hardly protect
ships must have crossed, and about th
speak. Tchernia and Pomey believe, sen
that would prevent the construction o
of obelisks and other heavy material f
secure, ships of such a size.

17 Purcell 1996, 269;

19 cf. Coarelli
Pomey and 1997, 345-361
Tchernia 1978

18 Steffy 1994, 23-78, esp. 23, 77.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 9

The deciding factor in their regular use would be economic convenience or necessity
that too there can be differing views, with Tchernia and Pomey not averse, I think, to s
sibility of regular use for grain but Keith Hopkins skeptical because of what he saw as th
cost that would be involved in the loss of such a ship and the difficulty of rinding ports i
if it got into trouble on the voyage. I have argued elsewhere that these are not insuperabl
and that the Roman annona, at the very heart of the exercise of Roman power under th
was exceptional.20 1 would not yet rule out the possibility of such grain carriers. The essen
ment of such foodstuffs, after all, to compensate for the chronic variability of staple cr
Mediterranean, was the oldest of truths, which underlay the very creation of cargo ship
in the Greek and Roman world.21 The Roman annona embodied that ancient truth but
writ large, and with all the resources and compulsion of imperial power.
But cargoes allow speculation about more than ship sizes. What was carried, in what q
with what regularity, in what containers, how packed and stowed, provoke questions abo
of trade. Toby Parker, who is the great expert on all this, has already shown how even in
loads the cargoes were often very mixed - with, for example, amphoras, pottery, mill
ingots from different places in the same hold.22 That has implications for the complexit
mercial activity, transshipment, and harborside wheeling and dealing; no simple linear
straight-line tramping from port to port, will do. More important, it also allows, with suitab
the development of views about circulation patterns of certain goods, whether relatively
or spread further afield. This is a building up from the bottom, as it were, of a certain
hard evidence, on a microeconomic scale, to match or temper the macroeconomic specu
historians about how the circulation of goods worked in the Roman Empire.
A famous example of what can be achieved in this way is the story of the Sestii from
near Cosa. Careful study of the amphoras - more of which have now, amazingly, turned
McCann's deep-water survey at Skerki Bank off northwest Sicily - has allowed the reco
of a trade in wine, which flourished for a century or more in the late Republic, particu
southern Gaul.23 But other names, such as Publius Veveius Papus from Fundi near Formi
Latium, Trebius Loisios from either Ischia or Pompeii, or the Pirani family from Camp
now be cited to help fill out the picture. The rise and fall in such trading patterns can
with some confidence, even changes from shipping special Italian vintages to that of vin
carried not in amphoras at all but in great dolia bedded in the holds of ships. Something
be repeated to an extent in the study of trade from Spain in wine and oil in the early E
later in the second century A.D. from Africa.24 They form particular case studies - and
Parker and Archer Martin are to talk on these matters - which help to give welcome p
some of our generalizations. But, intriguingly and importantly, I think, they also shadow
ings of empire and imperial power.
What underwater archaeology and aerial photographs - particularly those in the gre
tion by General Giulio Schmiedt of the Italian coastline - have really allowed us to see
Roman possession and enjoyment of the sea came ultimately to be expressed in the fulles
way.25 Maritime villas, for example, in favored areas, like the Bay of Naples, flaunted
and taste of their owners to the passing shipping and with their towers and colonnade

20 Rickman 1991. 23 See now Will 2001.

21 Parker 1996, esp. 99. 24 Throckmorton and Parker 1987.

22 See, in addition, Parker 1992b. 25 Schmiedt 1970; Horden and Purcell 2000, 125-126.

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10 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

turn to provide recognizable day-marks fo

miniature harbors and mooring facilities,
like the Istrian peninsula in the northern
Along the edges of the sea were great area
are in fact to be found all over the place,
greatest concentration perhaps along the s
mercial establishments for the production
exported all over the Roman world.27
But puzzles persist. When we say, "came t
do we mean? and what mechanisms are we
objects and exported goods throughout this
the circulation really empirewide and the resul
pay its soldiers, feed its armies and the priv
argued? Or was the circulation broken dow
insisted - though he also, I think, would see
even such regional flows.28 The role of the
yet elusive, permeating the background but
The state was most palpably present in th
Augustus after the defeat of Antony at A
fleets for a period at Forum Iulii (Frejus)
naval bases at Misenum on the Bay of Nap
ments were placed elsewhere, for example
to maintain a permanent naval control. The
power, of the emperor himself by control
out: "Armies, provinces, fleets, the whole
helped inhibit piracy, sea raiding, and gen
Yet there was no state merchant marine,
exandrinos, for transporting grain supplie
highly doubtful. The state was certainly con
whether feeding Rome or the armies, but t
and merchants.30 It was part of a pattern of
to tax collection, which went back to the e
magistrates and officials, was quite small, w
behavior ensured in its turn that state ma
and under the Empire there was an attemp
privileges to those who served the annona
help to create the system typical of the la
and corpora were, or were meant to be, inst
coming and typified a period when Roman
Curiously, one area where direct interven

26Degrassi 1955; Bezeczky 1995.

29 Starr 1989, 67-81; Tac. Ann.

27 Curtis 1988; 1991. 30Rickman 1980b, 129-132 (Ale

(contracts and privileges).
28 Hopkins 1980; 1983a; 1983b; Duncan-Jones 1990
See now Temin 2001.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 1 1

early Empire is in the trade with the East, which Lionel Casson and Steven Sidebotham, w
talk on the port of Berenike, have done so much to illuminate.31 A mixture of remarks in P
Elder about the drain of wealth from the empire to Arabia, India, and China and our know
the careful provision of guard posts and drinking wells on the caravan roads from the Red
across to Coptos on the Nile (which we know to be the main route for oriental goods to Ale
has provoked the vision of the state with a central and beady eye on this traffic. But though th
certainly took a hefty 25 percent tax, portoria, on all the goods passing to and from the Eas
higher than the 2.5-4 percent levied elsewhere at portoria boundaries in the empire - and
the emperors and upper classes enjoyed the fruits of this trade, spices and peppers, preciou
and textiles, to the full, the trade itself seems to be in private hands. Papyri make clear that
private families in Egypt, as well as others, maintained their own agents in the Red Sea po
handling their family interests in this overseas trade with India, just as Palmyrene familie
aged, and grew rich on, the goods coming overland from the east through Palmyra, a "por
desert."32 The route from the Red Sea ports to the Nile did need considerable organization,
state may have been involved, both to ensure the collection of its tax revenue and to contro
nomads. But there were important quarries in the area, for example at Mons Claudianus,
provided materials (including the columns of the Pantheon) for major building projects i
and elsewhere. The emperors were deeply concerned with such prestige projects, and that m
to account for a significant part of their interest in the security and stability of this area.
In direct control of the ports themselves, whether on the Red Sea or in the Mediterran
large, it is difficult to find officials, who were appointed by the state - unless the praefectu
Bereniddis in Egypt, the military commander of the whole Eastern Desert, qualifies for th
On this topic in general we hardly seem to have progressed much beyond the scrupulous
given by George Houston here in the Academy in 1979.33 He pointed out that, when we look
Ostia and Puteoli, where state appointees are to be expected because of the feeding of the
we find no trace of such officials. He concluded that it was the local municipalities themse
saw to such appointments from among their own local elite.
Emperors were, of course, interested in harbors and their provision, even the emperor
concerned to improve the harbor at Rhegium, though that was on the grain route to Rome
rebuilt the harbor at Ancona, Vespasian at Seleucia-in-Pieria, and Septimius Severus at his ho
of Lepcis Magna, about which Stephen Tuck is to speak. These actions, however, when they
seem to have either specific personal or some special - perhaps strategic - motivation; or they a
of the general desire of emperors to be seen as the greatest of all municipal benefactors, c
spectacular acts oieuergetism. Even Hadrian's particular generosity in harbor provision, com
on by Dio, was seen simply as part of a pattern of benefactions to cities, along with water
and other civic amenities. It was not an intervention to benefit the economic life of the emp
though that may have been partly the result. Imperial interest in harbors did not, therefor
to central control of them, though provincial governors, as in the famous inscription from
could always intervene. As in other periods of history, there was a mixture of public an
involvement in ports, with local groups shouldering much of the burden of repair, rene
administration in normal times and with state intervention only in special circumstances.34

31 Casson 1989; Sidebotham 1986. 34 (Rhegium) Joseph. A] 19, 205; (Ancona) CIL 9.5894;
(Seleucia-in-Pieria) Berchem 1985; (Lepcis Magna) Bartoc-
cini
32 Young 2001, 54-66, 170-173; Millar 1998, 1960; (Hadrian) Dio 69.5.3; (Ephesus) SEG 19.684 L.
131-137.
Antonius Albus a.d. 147.
33 Houston 1980.

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12 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

The social and economic structures by w

Roman world have also been seen as proble
fact that inscriptions recording traders and
only local significance - and Nick Rauh is t
world - and our belief, derived not least fr
known comparative costs of such work from
to indulge in sea-trading on any scale. But
the third century B.C. been forbidden to o
both Republic and Empire is permeated wit
ventures generally. The resolution of the p
"companies" as such, and as known in other
of moderate wealth and only local importan
one another's interests in ports and other k
are half hidden under words like societasja
I believe also, though the evidence is neve
D'Arms argued, senatorial families, and even
slaves, their freedmen (who were still boun
to act commercially, while their own involv
ing ventures by sea from the great ports m
were available, by whatever means, when
But not all Roman ports were like this, as
with their recent work at Aperlae in Lycia on
survived, and sometimes prospered, over a m
periods in a most unpromising environment.
sea, both immediately behind it and aroun
was linked to the outside world by means o
was typical of the ancient, and even of the
The nature of ancient navigation, about w
human muscle, and "picturing" the sea wor
a need for harbors of refuge, if nothing mor
form of sea-trading in antiquity, linked to
regular stops of an unpretentious kind but
together well - physical need and socioeco
What made the difference in Aperlae's ca
the marine mollusk from which purple dy
moved by boat along the coast to Andriake
inland. From there it was transshipped to
in other words, though in so many ways ill-f
world that made her survival possible. It wa
trade all meshed and fed into one another
Aperlae, with its niche market in murex p
Adriatic, up in the Istrian peninsula, with pa
world. But it reminds me also of the Italian
Barbara Kreutz has done remarkable work.

35 D'Arms 1981. 36 Hohlfelder and Vann 2000.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 13

terrain, with minimal facilities, but it too became a maritime success in what Kreutz calls
of maritime peddlers." What she stresses is that its success is an argument against geog
determinism; it was not geography that determined Amalfi's - or, we might add, Aperlae's
or failure but human factors, the "worlds" into which they must fit.37
This leads us on to a wider geographical perspective of the Mediterranean as a whole
wider temporal sweep, namely its history beyond the end of antiquity, both of which are cha
of Horden and PurcelTs new book, The Corrupting Sea. Their work has a multiplicity of
which it will take a long time to absorb properly, but a major focus is on what they call "c
ity," and their contention that "connectivity," particularly by sea, was the major charact
the fragmented Mediterranean world. This "connectivity," if I understand their view cor
not, or not simply, a geographical concept; it is, on the contrary, very much a social conc
not geography that determines connectedness but complex human endeavors over time.
a Mediterranean world of palpitating, quivering connections between regions and micro
a living matrix. For them, therefore, ports, from the most elaborate to the most basic, a
"nodes of density in a matrix of connectivity." Such nodes may, over time, intensify, or w
even shift a little in location, as, for example, with Aquileia, Grado, and Venice, or Cartha
Utica, and La Goleta.38 A phrase such as "nodes of density" may seem like jargon, but it has
advantage that we avoid becoming entangled in any artificial and overly rigid system of
tion of ports and landing places, a typologie des escales.39 It also encourages us to think fle
subtly about the relation of the parts, particularly the world of cities and their territories
transformers, as it were, in the system of production, consumption, and exchange of the e
the dynamic whole, which was the throbbing maritime world of Rome.40
But what about the more lowly organization of port areas, rather shirked by these hig
ways of talking and thinking? Marseilles is of interest here because of the recent discove
up against one of the quays of the Roman port, of numerous small wooden wax tablets,
forated with a hole, and with marks that connect them to the 4 percent portoria tax c
the Gallic region.
Hesnard and France widen out their discussion of these finds, interestingly, to the wh
tion of the counting and control of merchandise as it was loaded and unloaded from sh
stored in quayside warehouses.41 Scholars have always been puzzled by the strange objec
like the backbone of a fish, held by an official pictured in a mosaic at Ostia and in the fa
painting of the river boat his Giminiana in the Vatican. In each case he seems to be cou
some method, the measuring of grain in a modius. Hesnard and France raise the possibi
the object is in fact not rigid but a knotted string, on which counters such as the wooden
Marseilles were collected, and hung downward, as the porters of goods handed them in. In
of such "handing in" they cite the famous relief of carriers of wine amphoras at Portus
some sort of check or counter to tabularii at a desk, as they come down the gangplank on
Further recent evidence of such detailed counting, for receipt, storage, and export, com
Carthage, from an archive of ostraka of the late fourth century A.D., newly restudied by
taining elaborate records of oil measurers, mensores olei, at the port.42

37 Kreutz 1988, 109. 40 Wilson 2002.

38 Horden and Purcell 2000, 123-172, 41

393France and Hesnard
("nodes of1995.
density").
42 Pena 1998.
39 Gilissen 1974.

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 14 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

I have argued elsewhere that evidence su

implies that there was a vast supporting st
Roman world, which depended, more than
full and accurate records at every level.43 A
ity, and I do not know whether Hesnard a
counting must have been a general, and cr
substantial port, whether for state or priv
I have always hoped for greater illuminat
desert conditions should be right for the
have been not far away at Mons Claudianus
make allowances for the special peculiarit
known to us from the ancient merchant g
they would help to inform us about the ordi
and unloading of ships, and so on. So far,
the work at Myos Hormos (firmly located
like a "black hole" so far as administrative
been, everything from ships' papers that n
receipts of all kinds. Their existence, once
implications, I think, for the sophisticatio
siveness of literacy - sub-elite literacy, if y
About port construction, building metho
tration, we are fast becoming much better
close analysis of submerged structures for
evidence from a variety of sites in Turke
interesting work at Portus and Antium, a
topher Brandon are to talk. Elaine Gazda,
at Cosa - and will talk about their date -
historiographical survey, setting this work
But Caesarea in present-day Israel, the fo
ever mounted, remains unique in the detai
its building methods have been the focus o
nology, John Oleson, and now of the arch
to the timber formwork for concrete has
of ship carpentry.45
The use of concrete was the great Roma
harbor building in particular, the use of
that would set underwater. It was an achi
the late eighteenth century, and it allowed
where nature provided little or no help b
economic, it might be desirable that a ha
tion from geographical determinism. Caesa

43 Rickman 1998; cf. Humphrey

45 Oleson 1991,
and Branton 1992; Brandon, Kemp, and Grove especially co
1999.and K. Hopkins.
tions by N. Horsfall

44 Gazda 2001.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 15

hydraulic concrete was being used by the time Herod came to build his harbor during the
Augustus. It also shows how an international world was already in being. The pozzolana n
was imported from Italy, from the area of Puteoli, as tests have shown, and also perhaps t
engineers skilled in its use, in a kind of complete "technology transfer."
This use of concrete, however, grew within established earlier traditions of harbor b
by Phoenicians and Greeks. Piers, or splash walls, therefore, made of concrete could
on foundations that were rubble mounds, walls made of ashlar blocks could be built on
foundations, and quays made of wood and filled with earth continued to appear in river ha
other contexts in the Imperial period. As John Oleson has pointed out, ancient harbor tec
never followed a simple linear development; too much depended on topography, the mater
able, and the economic conditions prevailing locally.46 What we find, as he says, is the dev
of a repertoire of techniques, which increased the flexibility of harbor design and the pr
success. Other possibilities than basins jutting out into the sea, embraced by projecting
moles, continued to be exploited: canal ports, such as Metapontum; or lagoon ports, as at T
in southern Italy; and of course natural harbors, as at Syracuse or at Zancle in Sicily.47
But Caesarea, and Herod's claims for it, was about more than technology. The descrip
of it given by Josephus, the Jewish historian writing in the first century A.D., show how th
gleamed with elegant buildings, towers, and columns and a great temple, which overlooke
They are reminders of the enduring importance of religion in sea-going life and of the
monumentality and image-making possible in harbor areas. But they also remind us that
harbor structures on this scale depended on political decision, and political will, at the high
The temple was dedicated to Augustus and Rome, and Herod's harbor was named Seb
Greek version of Augustus) in honor of the emperor himself. We are not just in an int
world here but the world of power politics.
So where do we go now with the study of ports and their maritime world? I suppose ou
must be multilayered.
There are new techniques to be used: obvious in the case of underwater archaeology,
ever increasing refinement of methodology and analysis and the potential now of deep-w
vey; but the picture on land is also changing. Resistivity surveys and other geophysical m
conjunction with air photographs, used by Keay and Millet at Portus, and Heinzelmann an
at Ostia,49 raise the possibility of detecting and understanding harbor areas better witho
and expensive excavation or the problem of conservation, about which Pamela Gambogi
We could be at the beginning of a new era here.
Various quite different disciplines - study of texts, archaeological expertise, geograp
morphology - have to be brought together, to allow us to find more sites and not to be m
old ones. In our quest small details must be studied but big questions asked - particularly
of all kinds, meshed with their hinterlands and, even more important, meshed with each
means of the sea.
The Mediterranean was, after all, the Romans' mare internum, that sea which provid
with the short internal routes of empire. Interestingly, the name mare mediterraneum w
until very late. The first extant reference, I think, is in Isidore of Seville in the sixth/sevent
a.d., and the name was not apparently in common usage until the twelfth and thirteenth

46 Oleson 1988, 147-157. 48 Joseph. 4J 336^339.

47Schmiedtl970. 49 Keay et al. 2006; Heinzelmann and Martin 2002.

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16 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

a.d. That may reflect a change in perspectiv

originally of the adjective mediterraneus -
not, for the Romans it was always mare mag
sea base of Rome's fully possessed power.
In this Roman sea world - to parody Geo
density," if you like {cabotage and the cond
more equal than others. If I were, invidious
to Rome in this sphere, it would have to be
Of course, I know that Carthage had been
ranean, the great enemy of Rome, and the
thage had been defeated and razed to the gr
became a great city and great port again -
and others - it was within a Roman context
The final struggle of the Republic, howe
left Octavian and the West the winners bu
city, with the most complex and elegant w
the Mediterranean world.
The Rome of Octavian/Augustus, and all t
create something equally impressive, with a
to accommodate the mass of shipping, of w
center of wealth and political power. Rome
maritime approach to match the monument
the great exemplum was surely Alexandria.
of Alexandria as a port, through the work o
a key piece of the jigsaw to its rightful plac
But it was Rome's greater rhythms as an i
Ptolemies - the pulsing movement of masse
for the city itself and the armies, the orga
its taxes, that created the whole structure
ship sailings that, once they existed, could
the state's imperatives, the imperatives of p
Rome. Within this grand network of cour
find support at the height of the Empire:
and middle-distance circulations of goods, t
widely dispersed. But it was the overarchi
the whole.52

As the state structure weakened and lost

Rome, greatly reduced in population by th
ford such shipments of grain, oil, or wine,
staples from Africa and elsewhere, fell aw
circulations.53 That affected everything -
routes, and safety.

50 Shaw 2001, n. 13; 52

Isid. Etym.
Hopkins 13.16.1.
1988.

51 Purcell 1996, 53Wickhaml988.

275-276.

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 PORTS, SHIPS, AND POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD 17

It is all this that we have to try to analyze and to understand - this wonderful, inter
complexity and interdependence. It may be difficult, but, by heavens, it is exciting. No sing
before or since, has controlled all the lands around the Mediterranean Sea or has "possess
sea so completely as the Romans did. It will take all our combined efforts to unravel and
that "possession" properly.

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 18 GEOFFREY RICKMAN

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