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and statues indicates that there was a private market for white Synnadic marble, and it is
possible that the workshops did not deem it necessary to keep track of every single item
176
produced. 313 The distribution of pavonazzetto in the West is noticeably broad: imported not
only to Rome, Ostia, and the major cities along the North African shore, it also reached
southern Spain and southern England. 314
Land and River Transportation: Two Possible Routes for Docimian Marble Exports
A cursory look at a map of Asia Minor is sufficient to appreciate why the burden of
transportation influenced the price of Docimian marble. Synnada and the nearby quarries
lay in the heart of Phrygia, hundreds of kilometers away from the sea (Fig. 50). While the
Meander and Sangarius rivers may have been used to send quarried items downstream to
the Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea, there was still a long stretch of road to be covered
before reaching navigable points of departure.
J.B. Ward Perkins and P. Pensabene have hypothesized about where Docimian
marble was loaded for transport by sea. Nicomedia, strategically located where the land
routes of central Asia Minor converge with the sea lanes reaching the Aegean and Black
Seas, was, according to Ward-Perkins, “to Anatolia what Constantinople was to Europe.
[…] Any organization engaged in exporting the produce of Bithynia would have been
almost bound to gravitate to Nicomedia.” 315 Ward-Perkins maintains that, even if the
313 Pensabene 2002b, 206-7.
314 Dodge 1988, 222, fig. 7.
315 Ward-Perkins 1992b, 65.