Water Transportation in the Roman Empire: Seagoing Ships, River Boats, Pirates | Early European History And Religion

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TRAVEL BY WATER IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

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Roman transport ship Transport overland was slow and expensive. On sea it was cheap, but slow and risky in the winter. Roman used sailing vessels and river boats. There were, however, few transportation companies, few lines of boats or vehicles, that is, few running between certain places and prepared to carry passengers at a fixed price on a regular schedule. The traveler by sea whose means did not permit him to buy or charter a vessel for his exclusive use had often to wait at the port until he found a boat going in the desired direction and then make such terms as he could for his passage. And there were other inconveniences. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

The boats were small, and this made them uncomfortable in rough weather; the lack of the compass caused them to follow the coast as much as possible, and this often increased the distance; in winter navigation was usually suspended. Traveling by water was, therefore, avoided as much as possible. Rather than sail to Athens from Ostia or Naples, for example, the traveler would go by land to Brundisium, by sea across to Dyrrachium, and continue the journey by land. Between Brundisium and Dyrrachium boats were constantly passing, and the only delay to be feared was that caused by bad weather. The short voyage, only 100 miles, was usually made within twenty-four hours. For a detailed and easily accessible account of an ancient voyage, see Acts, xxvii-xxviii. |+|

Apprehensions about the sea was not exclusive to Biblical stories like Jonah and the Whale. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The ancient Romans, too, appeared anxious about the presence of sea monsters in the Mediterranean. In fact while they were enormously fond of swimming in their famous baths, local rivers, and man-made plunge pools, the Romans were less interested in swimming in the sea. They were terrified of it. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to be afraid of the sea that don’t include fierce aquatic creatures. Pirates were a real threat, and the lack of technology and communications systems we enjoy today meant that shipwrecks were a common, costly, and deadly affair. Anxieties about. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 28, 2018]

Commercial Shipping in the Roman Empire

J. A. S. Evans wrote: Bulky goods had to be carried by ship or riverboat, owned generally by a shipowner (navicularius) who sailed his own vessel, carrying cargoes of such goods as marble, timber, produce, firewood, or jars (amphorae) of wine or olive oil either on his own account or on consignment for others. Because the imperial government needed private shippers to carry supplies to Rome and to the army, the collegia of navicularii (leagues of shipowners) were the first trade alliances to be granted official recognition and privileges, for it was more efficient for the government to contract with them than with individual ship owners. [Source: J. A. S. Evans, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com]

Collegia of navicularii are first known in great numbers in the time of Hadrian, and they remained free agents until the third century, when they were brought under the aegis of the imperial service. The largest vessels belonged to the Alexandrian grain fleet, which brought wheat from Egypt to Rome. Lucian of Samosata (The Ship i-ix) describes one ship of between 1,200 and 1,300 tons that was blown off course and reached the harbor of Piraeus after 70 days at sea. Grain shipments had to be suspended in winter. St. Paul's voyage to Italy on a grain transport (Acts 27.1–28) illustrates vividly the danger of trying to sail too late in the sailing season on the Mediterranean.

Ancient Rome, the Sea and Trade

Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology magazine: Romans considered the Mediterranean such an innate part of Roman life that they often referred to it simply as Mare Nostrum, or “our sea.” However, paradoxically, as it was located nearly 20 miles inland, Rome was without a suitable nearby maritime port. This obstacle had periodically inconvenienced the city over the course of the previous millennium. In a sense, Rome’s growth had always relied on its capacity to connect with ever-broadening Italian and Mediterranean trade networks. The more Rome expanded, the more it turned to outside resources to feed its population. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2015]

By the beginning of the empire at the end of the first century B.C., the population of Rome and its environs had reached well over a million people. The lack of a nearby maritime port was beginning to make supplying the city a nearly impossible task. With its territory now spread from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, resources from every region sailed to Rome. Olive oil, wine, garum (a popular fish sauce), slaves, and building materials were shipped from places such as Spain, Gaul, North Africa, and the Near East. However, the most important responsibility of the Roman emperor was ensuring the steady and continuous flow of grain. Grains and cereals were the staple of the Roman diet, either consumed in bread form or served as a porridge. It has been estimated that a Roman adult consumed 400 to 600 pounds of wheat per year. With a population of more than a million, this required Rome to stock a staggering 650 million pounds annually. Throughout Rome’s history, shortages in the grain supply led to riots. The city’s food supply was frequently interrupted by storms and bad weather, and grain ships could be lost at sea. Any such delay or loss created civil unrest.

“From the second century B.C. onward, the Roman government took an increasingly active approach to monitoring and controlling the grain supply. First, the government began to regulate and subsidize the price, ensuring that grain remained affordable to the masses at all times. By the Augustan period, the emperor was doling out as much as 500 pounds of grain per head to as many as 250,000 households. The emperors realized that the key to Rome’s stability was keeping its population well fed.

“Yet, by the first century A.D., Rome could no longer be sustained by Italian harvests alone. It began to exploit its newly annexed fertile provinces, especially North Africa and Egypt, which soon became the largest supplier of Roman grain. It took as many as a thousand ships, constantly sailing, just to support the demand for grain in the city. With large grain ships typically capable of hauling more than 100 tons, and sea transport at least 40 times less expensive than land transport, Rome desperately needed a deepwater port close to home.

Roman Ships

The Rome-Carthage trade ships were wooden vessels with square rigs and a deep belly which held amphoras filled with wine, olive oil, fish sauce and other goods. Planks were fastened together with hand cut mortise-and-tenon joints.

A number of Roman-era vessels have been excavated from the muddy ancient harbor of San Rossore in Pisa, They include merchant vessels, river boats and a warship described as the “the best-preserved vessel of antiquity ever found." The warship was preserved in 15 feet of mud and is practically undamaged. Some of the ships are on display on Pisa's new Museum of Ships.

A Roman trading ship dated to 200 B.C. that was found was 100 feet long and featured cargo holds in the fore and aft. It carried two lead anchors, bronze vessels and eight types of amphora (double-handed jars).

Items found on a ship dated to the time of Christ have indicated that trade took place between North Africa, southern France and Campania in southern Italy. First century A.D. ships have been found with cargos of granite stones, columns and a large anchor and amphorae carrying wine and oil. A fifth century ship has been found with iron anchors, hand-operated mill, a lamp from Carthage and Roman coins.

Large Roman Ships

Normal-size sea vessels held about 3,000 amphorae while large freighters held as many a 10,000. Grain was the main commodity, followed by wine and olive oil.

As time went the ships became larger and larger. Galleys rated as "fours," "fives," and "sixes" were introduced between 400 B.C. and 300 B.C. They were followed up by "16s," "20s" and "30s." The Emperor Ptolemy IV built a massive "40." The numbers refereed to the number pulling each triad of oars. Ships with more than three bank were built but ultimately they proved to be impractical.

Describing one of the largest boats, a 2nd century Greek wrote: "It was [420 feet] long, [58 feet] from gangway to plank and [72 feet] high to the prow ornament...It was double-prowed and double-sterned...During a trial run it took aboard over 4,000 oarsmen and 400 other crewmen, and on deck 2,850 marines."

In the late 1990s an English-Greek team built a 170-oar trireme at a cost of around $640,000. Held together with 20,000 tenons fastened with 40,000 oak pegs, it set sail with a an international crew of 132 men and 40 women. Describing, the team in action, Timothy Green wrote in Smithsonian, "the crew rowed together and sang together, getting up high spirits and up to seven knots.

Roman Ships Found Off Italy in the 2010s

In 2012, archaeologists said they found an almost intact Roman ship in the sea off the town on Varazze, some 18 miles from Genova, Italy. Rossella Lorenz wrote in discovery.com; “The ship, a navis oneraria, or merchant vessel, was located at a depth of about 200 feet thanks to a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) following tips from fishermen who had caught some jars in their nets. The ship sank about 2,000 years ago on her trade route between Spain and central Italy with a full cargo of more than 200 amphorae. [Source: Rossella Lorenz, discovery.com, August 20, 2012]

“Test on some of the recovered jars revealed they contained pickled fish, grain, wine and oil. The foodstuffs were traded in Spain for other goods. “There are some broken jars around the wreck, but we believe that most of the amphorae inside the ship are still sealed and food filled,” Lt. Col. Francesco Schilardi, who led the Carabinieri Subacquei (police divers), said.

“The ship, which dates to sometime between the 1st Century B.C. and the 1st Century A.D., is hidden under layers of mud on the seabed, which has left the wreck and its cargo intact. The vessel will remain hidden at the bottom of the sea until Italian authorities decide whether to raise it or not. “Right now the area of the finding has been secured, and no fishing or water traffic is allowed,” Lt. Col. Schilardi said.

in 2010, A team of marine archaeologists using sonar scanners have discovered four ancient shipwrecks off the tiny Italian island of Zannone, with intact cargos of wine and oil. The remains of the trading vessels, dating from the first century B.C. to the 5th-7th century AD, are up to 165 metres underwater, a depth that preserved them from being disturbed by fishermen over the centuries. “The deeper you go, the more likely you are to find complete wrecks,” said Annalisa Zarattini, an official from the archaeological services section of the Italian culture ministry. [Source: Gulfnews.com, August 23, 2010 by Ancientfoods]

“The timber structures of the vessels have been eaten away by tiny marine organisms, leaving their outlines and the cargos still lying in the position they were stowed on board. “The ships sank, they came to rest at the bottom of the sea, the wood disappeared and you find the whole ship, with the entire cargo. Nothing has been taken away,” she said.

“The discoveries were made through cooperation between Italian authorities and the Aurora Trust, a US foundation that promotes exploration of the Mediterranean seabed. The vessels, up to 18 metres long, had been carrying amphorae, or large jars, containing wine from Italy, and cargo from North Africa and Spain including olive oil, fruit and garum, a pungent fish sauce that was a favourite ingredient in Roman cooking. Another ship, as yet undated, appeared to have been carrying building bricks. It is unclear how the vessels sank and no human remains have been found. The vessels are the second “fleet” of ships to be discovered in recent years near the Pontine islands, an archipelago off Italy’s west coast believed to have been a key junction for ships bringing supplies to the vast warehouses of Rome.

The discovery of wrecked ships is not unusual - there are said to be thousands dotted around the Mediterranean. In 2018, a Greek merchant ship dating back more than 2,400 years was found lying on its side off the Bulgarian coast - and was hailed as officially the world's oldest known intact shipwreck. Also in 2018, dozens of shipwrecks were found in the Aegean sea dating back to the Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras.

Roman Ship Loaded with Fermented Fish Sauce

In 2015, archaeologists announced that they had discovered a 25-meter-long ancient Roman vessel laden with 3000 jars garum – on the seabed off the coast of Alassio, in the northeastern Liguria region of Italy. “It’s an exceptional find that dates to the first or second century AD,” Dr. Simon Luca Trigona, who led the team, told The Local. “It’s one of just five ‘deep sea’ Roman vessels ever to be found in the Mediterranean and the first one to be found off the coast of Liguria. We know it was carrying a large cargo of garum when it sank.” [Source: AFP, December 11, 2015]

“In spite of the mystery that usually surrounds ancient shipwrecks, it is almost certain that the ship was sailing a route between Italy, Spain and Portugal in order to transport a precious cargo of Roman garum. The clue lies in the shape of the clay jars, as the sauce itself has all since seeped into the sea. “After we filmed the wreck and analyzed an amphora [clay jar] and some fragments that a robotic craft brought back to the surface, we realized the ship was carrying a huge quantity of fish sauce when it sank,” said Trigona. “The amphora are almost all of a certain type, which was used exclusively for garum.”

“In addition to the fish sauce, archaeologists also identified two types of jar which were only manufactured in the area around the river Tiber in Rome. It is thought they were probably being used to transport some of the area’s excellent regional wines to the Iberian peninsular. “It’s a nice find because it means we are almost sure about the route this ship was on,” Trugona said. “She most likely sailed out of Rome along the Tiber and sank a couple of weeks later while making the return journey, weighed down by all that fish sauce.”

Roman Ships Found in the 2020s

According to Archaeology magazine: An ancient merchant must have suffered a severe financial setback 2,000 years ago when his ship laden with commodities such as wine and olive oil sank off the island of Kefalonia. The wreck of the 110-foot Roman ship and its freight, which lie 200 feet below the sea’s surface, were detected using side-scan sonar. When it went down, the ship was carrying an estimated 6,000 amphoras. It is the largest shipwreck ever discovered in the eastern Mediterranean. [Source: Archaeology magazine, March -April 2020]

In July 2023, the BBC reported: The wreckage of an ancient Roman ship from more than 2,000 years ago was found off the port of Civitavecchia, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north-west of Rome. It dates from about the 1st or 2nd Century BC and was found laden with hundreds of amphorae - a type of Roman terracotta jar. The pottery was found mostly intact, the Carabinieri police's art squad said in a statement. The ship, estimated to be more than 20 meters long, was discovered on a sandy seabed 160 meters (525 feet) below sea level. "The exceptional discovery is an important example of the shipwreck of a Roman ship facing the perils of the sea in an attempt to reach the coast, and bears witness to old maritime trading routes," the Carabinieri said. [Source Francesca Gillett, BBC News, July 25, 2023]

The police art squad - which is in charge of protecting Italy's priceless cultural heritage - said the relic was found and filmed using a remotely operated robot. They did not say whether experts will now try and recover it, or its precious cargo, from the sea floor. It is not known what the Roman jars on board would have been used for, although typically amphorae were used to transport goods, such as oil, wine or fish sauce. Such artefacts are widely found throughout the ancient eastern Mediterranean world.

Evidence of Smuggling on a Roman Ship

In 2012, Italian archaeologists said they had uncovered evidence of smuggling between North Africa and Italy on a third-century A.D. shipwreck off the west coast of Sicily. Rossella Lorenzi wrote in Archaeology magazine: “The most complete Roman ship ever found, the 52-by-16-foot merchant vessel was carrying amphorae filled with walnuts, figs, olives, wine, oil, and fish sauce from Tunisia to Rome when it sank. [Source: Rossella Lorenzi, Archaeology, Volume 65 Number 4, July/August 2012 ^^^]

“Intriguingly, among the ship's official cargo were hidden stashes of so-called tubi fittili (fictile tubes). According to Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily's Superintendent of the Office of the Sea, "Basically they are small terracotta cylinders open at one end and closed at the other. Rows of these hollow tiles were used in vaulting and other construction." ^^^

“The tubes, which were used from the mid-Imperial era to the end of the Byzantine period, worked by fitting the narrow end, or nozzle, of one tile into the larger end of another. Because they were joined loosely, series of the lightweight tiles could be arranged in curves, making it easier to form arches and vaults. In North Africa, especially Tunisia, the valuable tubes were manufactured and cost a quarter of what builders paid for them in Rome. "To augment their poor salaries, sailors bought these vaulting tubes cheaper in Africa, hid them everywhere on the ship, and resold them in Rome," Tusa explains.” ^^^

Pirates in Ancient Rome

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: The origins of the modern term “piracy” can be traced back to the ancient Greek word peiráomai, meaning attempt (i.e., “attempt to steal”). Gradually this term morphed into a similar sounding term in Greek meaning “brigand,” and from that to the Latin term pirata. Ancient pirates left no archaeological records. The historical evidence for what they did, why they did it, and the attempts that were made to quell them is obtained entirely from written sources. These help build a picture of the threat that pirates presented and reveal that the practice was prevalent throughout antiquity. [Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

Piracy in the ancient world can be linked, in part, to geography. The ruggedness of the Mediterranean region often favored maritime rather than agricultural livelihoods. During the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, occupants of coastal settlements such as Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre in Lebanon, and Athens, Aegina, and Corinth in Greece, relied on marine resources such as fish, mollusks, seaweed, and salt for their survival. Most people living in such places would have owned a boat and possessed both seafaring skills and an unsurpassed knowledge of local navigation and sailing conditions. If times were particularly hard, these skills could be easily used in piracy.

During the fourth and third-centuries B.C., Etruscan pirates posed a major threat to the merchants of Greece. They presented a particular menace to the island of Rhodes whose thriving economy was heavily dependent on the Adriatic shipping routes between Greece and Italy. Rhodes therefore deployed its large, well-equipped navy to protect trading ships. With the collapse of Rhodian naval power in 167 B.C., however, a strong check on piracy was removed. By the latter half of the second century B.C., it had once again become a considerable threat to Mediterranean shipping with the rise of the notorious Cilician pirates from the coastal region of modern-day Turkey. Cilicia’s fearsome marauders targeted grain ships. Crews were captured and enslaved. Important or rich passengers were held hostage for ransom.

As Rome’s agricultural and mining industries depended on a plentiful supply of cheap slaves, the Romans were initially willing to tolerate the Cilicians, but their tolerance came to an end in 75 B.C. when a group of Cilician pirates kidnapped a young Julius Caesar, and held him on the island of Farmakonisi. The first- and second-century historian Plutarch describes Caesar’s blasé reaction to his 38-day captivity: He joined in their games, read aloud his speeches to them, and laughingly threatened to kill them all.

“The pirates were delighted at this,” Plutarch wrote, “and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth.” As it turned out, they had fatally underestimated their captive. Once ransomed, he hunted down and imprisoned them. A little later, “he took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking.”

Efforts to Combat Piracy in Ancient Rome

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: The sack of Rome’s port town, Ostia, at the hands of pirates in 67 B.C. finally persuaded the Romans to undertake a more concerted and systematic effort to tackle piracy. A new law granted the Roman general Pompey the Great unprecedented authority and finances for combating this scourge of trade. [Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

In his Life of Pompey, the historian Plutarch paints a vivid picture of the scale of the challenge facing the general: Their flutes and stringed instruments and drinking bouts along every coast, their seizures of persons in high command, and their ransoming of captured cities, were a disgrace to the Roman supremacy. For, you see, the ships of the pirates numbered more than a thousand, and the cities captured by them four hundred.

mosaic from Tunisia of Panther-Dionysus scattering the pirates, who are changed to dolphins, except for Acoetes, the helmsman; second century AD

Accordingly, Pompey undertook a series of raids against the main pirate strongholds in the Mediterranean. Although thousands died at the hands of Pompey’s troops, those that surrendered were issued pardons and given property and land in regions located far from the sea. These rewards enabled the recipient to make an honest living and diminished the attractions of piracy. Pompey’s policy to blend pressure with persuasion was to be the most successful method of fighting piracy for much of the Roman period.

Pirates in Pax Romana

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: By the death of Augustus in A.D. 14, virtually the whole Mediterranean coastline was under direct Roman control. This Pax Romana, the peace resulting from Rome’s dominance, curtailed the activities of pirates. As traditional occupations such as farming and trading became more profitable, the risks and hardships of a life at sea became distinctly less attractive. The political and economic unity of the Roman Empire also encouraged greater cooperation when it came to eradicating piracy. [Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

Nevertheless, like those before them, the Romans were never able to completely eradicate the practice. The occasional outbreak of piracy was typically suppressed by large-scale naval operations. These campaigns were aimed at locating and destroying the pirates’ anchorages and fleets. One such operation occurred during the reign of Tiberius in the first century A.D. An honorific inscription commissioned by the citizens of Ilion (in modern-day Turkey) offers thanks to the Roman general Titus Valerius Proculus for “destroying the pirate groups in the Hellespont and for guarding the city in all ways without burdening it.”

Although the Roman Empire had all but eradicated piracy at the height of its power, as its political and economic influence waned during late antiquity, the practice once again began to flourish in the Mediterranean. Even the powerful fleet of Byzantium did little to prevent piracy from becoming a great scourge to the region, and marauders once again terrorized the shipping lanes until the emergence of the formidable Arab and European navies in the early Medieval period.

Artists embraced piracy in their works, as in this third- century A.D. Roman mosaic. Uncovered in the House of Dionysus and Ulysses at Thugga (in modern Tunisia), it depicts, Dionysus, god of wine, aboard a pirate ship. Adapted from a tale that appears in the Homeric Hymns (a series of poems from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses ( A.D. 8), the god is kidnapped by pirates who believed him to be a mortal prince. When they try to tie Dionysus up, the ropes fall away. The helmsman warns that he must be a god, but the pirates take no notice. Suddenly, a vine springs from the top of the mast, and Dionysus turns into a lion. The terrified pirates jump into the sea and are turned into dolphins. In the mosaic, the figure of Dionysus is on the left (the head has been lost), and extends an arm toward his portly mentor, Silenus, who has his hand on the tiller.

River Boats in the Roman Empire

According to Archaeology magazine: Most ancient Romans probably couldn’t swim, so they put their lives at risk whenever they needed to cross a river. Sometimes, they would entreat protective gods to provide them safe passage. A collection of more than 100 coins dating from the 1st century B.C. to the 1st century A.D. found near the town of Berlicum likely marks the spot where Roman travelers once forded the River Aa and tossed coins into the water as offerings, hoping to reach the opposite shore unharmed. [Source: Archaeology magazine, September 2021]

Strip miners in the eastern Serbian town of Drmno uncovered a flat-bottomed ship and two monoxyles, or dugout longboats, along the banks of an ancient tributary of the Danube near the garrison at the Roman city of Viminacium. Measuring nearly 50 feet long and built for navigating shallow waters, the ship, which carried a crew of between 30 and 40, was used for either transport or combat. The timber-carved longboats were of a type used by the Avars and other nomadic groups who attacked the Romans at Viminacium. All three vessels likely date to the Roman period, explains archaeologist Miomir Korać of the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade. “There is a possibility that the monoxyles were part of the invasion fleet that ultimately ended life as the Romans knew it at Viminacium in the early seventh century A.D.,” he says. “It looks like they were simply abandoned on the banks.” [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2020]

Roman River Barge

Robert Kunzig wrote in National Geographic: “In the summer of 2004 a diver surveying the dump for archaeological riches noticed a mass of wood swelling from the mud at a depth of 13 feet. It turned out to be the aft port side of a 102-foot-long barge. The barge was almost intact; most of it was still buried under the layers of mud and amphorae that had sheltered it for nearly 2,000 years. It had held on to its last cargo and even to a few personal effects left behind by its crew. And through a further series of small miracles, including another intervention by Julius Caesar, it has emerged from the trash to resume its last voyage—safe this time in a brand-new wing of the Musée Départemental Arles Antique. [Source: Robert Kunzig, National Geographic, April 2014 ]

“To that snapshot of the boat, the nearly 1,200 cubic yards of mud and Roman trash that eventually buried it add a kind of time-lapse image of the commerce that was Arles. In the museum’s dim basement, Djaoui and I walked down long aisles of amphorae, many with their necks sliced off. “All this will have to be studied,” he said, with a trace of ambivalence. The dump is almost too rich; the archaeologists had already placed 130 tons of ceramic sherds back in the riverbed, in the hole left by the boat. I asked Djaoui about the building stones that had started the whole story. They were too heavy for the restored boat, he said; replicas were being used. Djaoui took me out behind the museum. The stones were there, next to a large trash bin, awaiting their own return to the river.

“When Arles-Rhône 3 sank, it was carrying 33 tons of building stones. They were flat, irregular slabs of limestone, from three to six inches thick. They had come from a quarry at St. Gabriel, less than ten miles north of Arles, and were probably headed toward a construction site on the right bank or in the Camargue, the marshy farmland south of Arles. The boat was pointed upstream, though, rather than downstream, indicating it had been tied up at the quay when it sank. A flash flood had probably swamped it.

Arles Rhone

“As the flood subsided, the cloud of sediment it had kicked up settled out of the water again, draping the barge in a layer of fine clay no more than eight inches thick. In that clay, in contact with the boat, Marlier and her team found the crew’s personal effects. A sickle they’d used to chop fuel for their cooking fire, with a few wood splinters next to the blade. A dolium, or large clay jar, cut in half to serve as a hibachi, with charcoal in the bottom. A plate and a gray pitcher that belonged to the same man—both bore the initials AT. “That’s what’s exceptional about this boat,” said Marlier. “We’re missing the captain at the helm. But otherwise we have everything.” The mast, with its traces of wear from the towropes, is to her the most precious find.

“Before that diving season was out, the same diver who had found Arles-Rhône 3, Pierre Giustiniani, discovered the statue that set the boat on its present course: a marble bust that looked like Julius Caesar. Portraits of Caesar are surprisingly rare. This one might be the only one extant that was sculpted while he was alive—perhaps right after he declared Arles a Roman colony, launching it into long centuries of prosperity.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024