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Pliny the Elder says that ships are built due to the explosion of the marble trade in
Early Imperial times (navesque marmorum causa fiunt), implying that without ships, no
marble would have reached Rome. Even though Pliny does not describe their particular
construction features, he relates how the largest among them were put on permanent
exhibit in the forerunners of nautical museums. 278
Augustus and Caligula each ordered a ship to be built to carry an obelisk from
Egypt to Rome. The one Augustus had built was so large and impressive that it was
displayed in permanent docks in the harbor of Puteoli. In Pliny’s point of view this ship
156
was “more extraordinary than all things seen at sea.” 279 Augustus’ ship was later destroyed
by fire, and Claudius converted Caligula’s vessel into a caisson filled with hydraulic
concrete; once sunk in Ostia, it created an artificial base for the mole of the Claudian
harbor. 280 Recent archaeological investigations of the left mole have yielded impressions in
the concrete which may have been made by ship’s frames. 281 If the impressions are indeed
those of Caligula’s ship, then we can estimate that the original vessel was 104 m long,
20.3 m wide, and 12.5 m high, for a total displacement of 1,300 tons: a true giant of the
sea, even for centuries to come. 282
Constantine, too, commissioned the construction of a gigantic ship to carry an
obelisk from Alexandria to Rome, which Ammianus Marcellinus describes as “a ship of
never-before-seen dimensions, moved by 300 oarsmen.” 283 The sheer size of these vessels
278 Plin. H 36.1.2.
279 Plin. H 36.14.70.
280 Plin. H 36.14.70.
281 Testaguzza 1970, 91, 114-5.
282 Testaguzza 1970, 114-5; Casson 1995, 188-9.
283 Amm. Marc. 17.4.13.