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Sangarius River is at present a little stream that flows up to Gordion, ca. 160 km away
from Docimium, it is possible that in antiquity it was remarkably larger, with a more
constant water flow that reached the Sea of Marmara. Therefore, quarried items would
have been brought by road to the closest loading spot available. Then, they would have
been floated downstream on rafts and on barges until they reached the Sea of Marmara.
Ward-Perkins cites a well-known letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan in A.D. 110,
asking permission to dig a canal linking Nicomedia to the lake of Sapanca lake in order to
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make it easier to transport by ship “fine stone (marmora), farm products, wood, and timber
for building.” 316 While in Latin the word marmor does not represent only what we call
marble today, but rather all high-quality stone, Ward-Perkins believes that Pliny is
referring here to the production of various types of stone from the Docimian quarries. The
same letter also implies that using the Sangarius River meant loading and unloading the
marble items twice: from Docimium to the first loading spot, and from the lake to
Nicomedia, instead of letting them reach the mouth of the Sangarius in the Black Sea,
loading them onto a ship, and sailing across the Bosphorus.
Pensabene, on the other hand, sees the harbors of Ephesus or Miletus a more likely
alternative. He reaches this conclusion from an inscription found at Dorylaeum (modern
Iscehisar in Turkey), which mentions a guild of muleteers who transported marble from
Docimium to the Roman administrative center of Synnada, about 45 km to the south.
Following this route, it is difficult to imagine that once in Synnada a shipment would have
been sent back past Docimium to the Sangarius River. 317 Apamea, which was accessible
316 Plin. Ep. 10.41.
317 Pensabene 1978a, 113.