Excavated: 1914 (Calza; after cleaning: NSc 1916, 326-328 with 327 fig. 5; Paribeni).
Mosaic: SO IV, 77 nr. 110, tav. 181 (top).
Inscription: CIL XIV S, 4549 nr. 32.
Date: 190-200 AD (SO IV); 200-210 AD (Clarke).
Meas. of tesserae: 0.015-0.02 (SO IV).
Mosaic
General descriptionThe northern half of the floor of the back room has not been preserved. Along the central part of the north end of the preserved part of the back room runs a thin black band. To the south of that are patches of white tesserae. In the central part of the passage to the front room is a restoration, partly solid black, partly of white and black tesserae in a checkerboard pattern.
The northern part of the floor of the front room and a stretch further down, to the south-east, have been preserved. The part in between is lost. The northern part is bordered on the west by a line of white marble (on the axis of the central column), and on the east by a wide band of white marble (slightly to the south of the axis of the central column). Next to the band, to the west, is a restored patch of black and white tesserae in a checkerboard pattern. The two preserved parts both have depictions, in the northern part in a black frame, two tesserae wide. Above the frame is a text.
TextBelow the passage to the back room is a text, without a tabula ansata or frame, not in the centre of the room, but moved to the west. We read (h. of letters 0.20):
NAVINARBONENSES
To the left and right is a leaf.
Paribeni read:
(leaf) ///// NARBONENSES (leaf)
A drawing in the Notizie degli Scavi has:
(leaf)[3]NARBONENSES(leaf)
Around the three missing letters a rectangle is drawn with many short vertical lines on the north side. This suggests that the missing part was filled, probably with a piece of marble (cf. statio 12).
Paribeni suggests NAVIG(atores) or MERC(atores). The modern supplement is wrong: the abbreviation should end with a consonant, not a vowel.
Suggested reading:
[NAV](iculari) NARBONENSES
Depictions
In the top part of the frame are a ship with a leaf above the main mast and a tower. They are connected by an intriguing construction. In the bottom part of the frame are a tiny fragment (now lost; see the drawing in the Notizie degli Scavi), a rectangular U-shape, and a dolphin (the sickle-shaped tail is a tiny separate fragment). A few horizontal lines indicate the sea (these are not on the drawing). I have combined the further description and the interpretation, below.
Becatti
Tower. Uno strano edificio, che ha la forma analoga a quella del faro, ma la cui torretta terminale ha un tetto conico e quindi non pare che debba trattarsi di un faro; è fatto comunque a più piani decrescenti, come una torre, di cui resta la parte inferiore del primo, la parte superiore forse del secondo con tre finestre, sul quale s'innalza la torretta allungata coperta a doppio spiovente, solcata da tre linee verticali bianche, dinanzi alle quale sul ripiano è un'asta con un braccio orrizontale, in cui R. Paribeni vide una gru con sacchi appesi collegati con corde alla prua della nave raffigurata a sinistra. Sarebbe perciò un edificio a mo' di torre con elevatore per il carico delle navi, eretto sulla banchina del porto raffigurata in basso.
Ship. La nave è rostrata con acrostolio di prua ricurvo, dalla poppa ricurva con ansercolo, i due timoni poppieri, acato appeso al pennone in bilico sull'albero maestro, retto dalle sartie, con artimone triangolare superiore. A prua, invece dell'albero obliquo di bompresso, sarebbero quindi da vedere delle corde per il carico dei sacchi con le maniche.
Dolphin. Un delfino dalla coda falcata.
Masonry
At either end of the rear wall of the back room is a pier of opus vittatum simplex. From behind the eastern pier a stretch of latericium is emerging. There is no east wall. The west wall is of opus latericium.
Interpretation
The statio is usually linked to Narbo Martius, today Narbonne, on the west end of the south coast of France. However, we cannot exclude that the whole province of Gallia Narbonensis is meant. All we can say is that no attempt was made to identify the province, by using a more general text (stationes 15 and 16: naviculari et negotiantes), by a specific text (statio 48: M(auretania) C(aesariensis)), or by omitting a mosaic text, presumably adding a marble inscription (stationes 49-50 and 51-52). A navicularius and a navicularius marinus from Narbonne are documented in CIL XII, 4398 and 4406.
The tower is above the centre of the rectangular U-shape, which is therefore its lower part. In the upper part of the tower are three windows, and above that is a high, narrow upper floor with three vertical, white lines. Paribeni points out that we do not see the lighthouse, because this is always depicted with an open fire and does not have a sloping roof as we see here. I do not think that there is a gabled roof however. In that case the central white line would not have reached the top. We may see the tower from below, in perspective. The two upper sides of the triangle would then be two upper edges of the floor, while the vertical, white lines indicate the sides. The absence of the fire also speaks against the lighthouse, and of course the sheer height of the lighthouse at Portus (over 100 metres) makes the connection of the upper part with a ship physically impossible. Thinking of the lighthouse is almost inevitable, but the mosaicist seems to be playing a visual game with us, concealing the true function of the building through the superficial similarity with the lighthouse.
The considerable height of the tower is a problem in itself. It was clearly the intention of the mosaicist to stress height, but as a result the ship seems to be floating in the air. Probably to solve this, Paribeni suggests that the lower part is a quay, and that it is possible that the scene at the top was repeated on the lost part of the mosaic below. What is clear is that there was a second ship. This can be deduced from a tiny fragment in the lower left part (visible only on the drawing in the Notizie degli Scavi), showing the lower end of two steering oars. Originally the mosaic may have looked something like this, with a second ship waiting for its turn.[1] Now we do not see a ship "floating" at an impossible height anymore, but two ships behind each other. Visually this reduces the height of the real tower.
The tower is connected to the ship by a vertical pole, at the upper end of which a horizontal one is attached. The vertical pole rests on a floor on the left side, twice as wide as the floor on the right side. Below the horizontal pole are two black objects with a round bottom. Inside the objects are horizontal and vertical white lines. We expect the sprit sail here. Paribeni suggests that we see two sacks hanging on the horizontal pole, which is part of a crane. He believes that the tower is a store building to which cargo is being transferred. His interpretation has usually been followed, with some hesitation.[2] However, horrea were not towers with a high, slender upper floor. Goods were carried to upper floors using sloping ramps, as can still be seen in, for example, the Piccolo Mercato (I,VIII,1).
The foremast of a ship could be used as a crane. A good example can be seen on the Torlonia relief (photo, drawing [3]): an object is lifted or lowered with the help of the foremast and a double rope. Cranes on quays used for loading and unloading ships are described by Vitruvius: "All the machines above described, are not only adapted to the purposes mentioned, but are also useful in loading and unloading ships, some upright, others horizontal, with a rotatory motion".[4] But seeing a crane is not without problems. If goods were being unloaded, the ship would certainly have been moored, but instead it is freely floating. The horizontal arm is not suited for lifting heavy objects. And what would be the function of the tall upper floor?
Only one possibility comes to mind for a functional, non-military tower that is not a lighthouse or crane for lifting cargoes: a water tower. In other words, it could be that fresh water was supplied to the ship, in preparation for its return trip. This idea offers a better explanation for the narrowness and height of the top floor.[5] We may reconstruct the procedure as follows. Water was led from the tower to the ship through hoses attached to the vertical and horizontal pole. The two poles formed a crane, with which the outlet was manoeuvered above a bag in which the water was collected. That the vertical pole led the water upwards was not a problem, because of the principle of the communicating vessels. The foremast with the bowsprit sail was used to lift the bag. The water was led to a tank in the hull through a hose. To speed up the operation, which will not have lasted long, the ship was not moored.
A graffito of a cargo ship from Puteoli might offer a parallel: photo, drawing.[6] To the right of a ship we see a vertical pole. A little below the top of the pole a horizontal pole is connected to it, from which something is hanging down. A diagonal line runs from the ship to the left end of the pole. It should be noted that the structure is behind the back part of the ship (witness the rudders). This is where a cabin and the captain were. Cargo was loaded and unloaded from the side or the front part of the ships.
Receptacles for sweet water are documented both in the hull and on the deck of ships,[7] but several questions remain. How many men were on board of the ships and how much water would they need, for how many days on sea?[8] What was fresh water used for anyway? Obviously for drinking, and probably also for cooking. We can furthermore think of washing and shaving, washing clothes, cleaning the ship. A quantity of at least several hundreds of liters would be needed.[9]
It is conceivable that the tower has actually been excavated, at the back of the basin of Claudius in Portus. Here a huge, Trajanic cistern was found that could contain approximately 1.152.000 litres.
The leaves flanking the text and above the main mast may have been wishes for a safe journey, with an apotropaic function.[10]
In the Languedoc area many different goods were produced. Narbo Martius was a commercial centre of exceptional importance, through trade relations (navicularii, mercatores, negotiatores) and local crafts. The most important crafts were metalworking and the manufacture of clothing, and the city became one of nine Imperial dye-works in late antiquity. The raw material came from nearby mines and pastures.[11] The presence of the city on the square may be due to a link in Ostia, documented in the second century, between iron mines and the food supply. T. Petronius Priscus is described as procurator Aug(usti) ferrariarum et annonae Ostis in an inscription that almost certainly comes from the square.[12] It may have been metal that brought Narbo Martius to the square.[13] Metal, by the way, was used extensively in ships, for nails, anchors, and lead sheets protecting the hull against wood destroying shipworms.[14]
A city that must have had a statio on the square, probably not far from this one, is Arelate (Arles, France). The city knew five corpora of navicularii marini Arelatenses, qui annonae deserviunt. In the Severan period a dispute between these guilds and a procurator was settled by the Praefectus Annonae in Rome (CIL III, 14165).[15] During the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, or Septimius Severus and Caracalla, the navicularii marini Arelatenses corporum quinque erected a statue for the procurator Augustorum ad annonam provinciae Narbonensis et Liguriae (CIL XII, 672).
The area mentioned in the latter inscription stretched from Narbo Martius (Narbonne) in the west to Luna (Luni, Italy), harbour for the marble quarries of Carrara, in the east. If the skippers from Narbonne also transported the marble from Carrara we can understand their interest in machines. The wreck of a ship carrying marble columns from Carrara was found near Saint-Tropez.[16]
(1) With smaller ships there could have been three ships.
(2) For an overview see Coadic 2012. On machines in harbours most recently: Mailleur 2017.
(3) Friedman 2011, figs. 5.2 and 5.2a; Shaw 1967, 397.
(4) Vitruvius, De Architectura X,2,10: Harum machinationum omnium quae supra sunt scriptae rationes non modo ad has res sed etiam ad onerandas et exonerandas naves sunt paratae, alae erectae, aliae planae in charchesiis versatilibus conlocatae. Translation J. Gwilt.
(5) About the water towers in Pompeii Olsson wrote: "All water towers had top containers made of lead ... The containers were intended to hold water: thus, they could not have had a base larger than the cross-section of the water tower as lead is a soft metal and needed total support for its base. ... To have sufficient stability the height of the container must have been smaller than its width" (Olsson 2015, 33-34).
(6) Drawing: Langer 2001, nr. 2001, pp. 69, 124, 127, Taf. 127. Photo: Camodeca 2018, p. 217. From a taberna on Via Pergolesi nr. 146/E. L. 0.35. Above the ship the text μνησθῇ Εὐτυχιανός has been read.
(7) Casson 1971, 177. One extremely large and luxurious ship in the third century BC, the Syracusia, reputedly had a receptacle with a capacity of 78 cubic metres. In 1999 a small ship was investigated near Aquileia that was carrying amphoras filled with processed fish. At the stern of the ship was a lead pipe that went into a hole in the hull. The remaining piece of pipe was 1.3 meters long and between 7 and 10 centimeters in diameter. There may have been a pumping system to supply sea water to an onboard fish tank, to allow trading in live fish over a long distance (Beltrame - Gaddi - Parizzi 2011). Cf. Boetto 2010.
(8) The length of voyages was determined primarily by the wind, not by the weak Mediterranean currents. During the mare apertum (March 10 / May 27 - September 14 / November 10) the Mediterranean winds are prevailingly northerly. With favourable winds the average speed of the sailing ships was between 4 and 6 knots (between 7.4 and 11.1 km/h) over open water, and slightly less while working through islands or along coasts. Against the wind the speed was less than 2 to 2.5 knots (less than 3.7 to 4.6 km/h) (Casson 1971, 282-291). Theoretical durations, with ships sailing day and night without stopping, for the outward and return journeys are then: Ostia - Cap Bon, Tunisia (270 nautical miles = 500 km): 2.2 and 5.2 days; Ostia - Alexandria (1120 nautical miles = 2075 km): 9.3 and 21.6 days.
(9) Sweet water may also have been used to clean the deck and hull. Salt in the joints of the planks seems undesirable. Skippers may also have noted that the wood gets damaged more easily in salt water, than in sweet water. Most damage to wooden ships is done by a creature living in salt water, called by biologists the Teredo worm, the "termite of the sea" (Steinmayer - MacIntosh Turfa 1996).
(10) Héron de Villefosse 1918, 257-260.
(11) Bonsangue 2002; Matthews, 1970; Riess 2013, 40-41.
(12) CIL XIV S, 4459; Rohde 2012, 149-150.
(13) More about metal in the section "The name of the square".
(14) Casson 1971, 209-210, 252-253.
(15) Sirks 1991, 97-103.
(16) Rougé 1966, 250.