Download Pdf of Dissertation - Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M ...

complaining about the corruption of his age, in which nature was violated and its eternal
laws subverted for the sake of fine marbles:
Headlands are laid open to the sea and nature is flattened. We remove the
barriers created to serve as the boundaries of nations, and ships are built
especially for marble. And so, over the waves of the sea, nature’s wildest
element, mountain ranges are transported hither and thither. 223
During the second and third centuries A.D. the marble trade continued to expand,
spreading from the capital to the provinces. Fashionable eastern stone became a widely-
adopted building material that not only the rich, but also the upper middle class could
afford. 224 This was one of many administrative successes of the Empire at the peak of its
140
power: organizing the production, transportation, and distribution of quarried marbles in an
efficient way, and making them accessible on a scale never seen before. Rome, in other
words, laid the foundations of a well-integrated Mediterranean economy, whose quarries,
shipwrecks, and deposits of unused raw materials still testify to the scale of the entire
system.
The relatively low cost of water transportation, along with the safety of trade
guaranteed by the pax romana within the Mediterranean made the marble trade sustainable
for more than three centuries. In spite of the previous resistance to its adoption, marble
became a popular building material, which contributed greatly to the embellishment of the
223 Plin. H 36.1.2-3.
224 Between the second and third centuries A.D. various Roman provinces, especially North Africa, began
importing marble for their public and private buildings, a sign that more marble was available on the market,
and its cost was more affordable than in the past. For specific case-studies, see Ward-Perkins 1951, 89-104;
Dodge 1988, 215-30; Pensabene 1990, 250-3.