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Article

harbours  

Philip de Souza

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Roman Material Culture
The earliest man-made harbour facilities in the Mediterranean region were the riverside quays of Mesopotamia and Egypt, for which records go back to at least the second millennium bce. Maritime installations probably began to appear around the Levantine coast in the early iron age, but the earliest securely datable harbour-works are the late 6th-cent. breakwater and ship-sheds of *Polycrates (1), tyrant of *Samos (Hdt. 3. 60). The development of specialized naval and merchant vessels, and a gradual increase in overseas trade, meant that quays and docks of increasing size and complexity were required in the Classical and Hellenistic periods.Early construction techniques made the most of natural features such as sheltered bays and headlands, as at *Cnidus. Exposed shores were protected with breakwaters and moles, like that at Samos. The development in Roman times of concrete which could set underwater enabled ambitious offshore constructions to be attempted, notably *Caesarea (2) in Palestine.

Article

roads  

Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Roman Material Culture

Ancient road-theory divides into two categories: the art of enhancing communications through built or dug works; and the planning and maintaining of large-scale communications networks based on such works.

Ramps, cuttings, stone pavements, zig-zags, and pull-offs are found on local roads from Archaic Greek times, and were clearly designed to facilitate wheeled traction: there are Mycenaean precursors, and parallels in many parts of the Mediterranean, such as Etruria. Improved routes for specialized purposes such as the haulage-route to Athens from the *marble*quarries of Mt. *Pentelicon, or the *diolkos across the isthmus of Corinth, are found, and fine paved processional ways like the Athenian Sacred Way or the approaches to great *sanctuaries like *Delphi. The technological repertoire was greatly increased by the deployment of arched construction on a large scale (see arches), which made *bridges and viaducts feasible; and where labour was cheap, and petrology favourable, major cuttings and tunnels could be contemplated. Such things, like the deployment of the older road technologies on any very large scale required large-scale organization, intercommunity co-operation, voluntary or enforced, and very large resources, all of which escaped the Greek world of the Archaic and Classical periods.

Article

tourism  

Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Literature
  3. Greek Material Culture
  4. Roman Material Culture
Well-known Greek tourists include *Solon, said (Hdt. 1. 30) to have visited Egypt and Lydia ‘for the sake of seeing’ (theōria), and *Herodotus (1) himself. Sea-borne *trade and sightseeing were surely companions from an early date, as they still were in the 4th cent. (Isoc. Trapeziticus 17. 4). A genre of Greek periegetic (‘travel’) literature arose by the 3rd cent., from which date fragments survive of a descriptive work, On the Cities in Greece, by Heraclides Criticus (ed. F. Pfister (1951); for partial trans. see Austin83); the only fully preserved work of this type is *Pausanias (3) (see polemon(3)), illustrating the thin line between sightseers and pilgrims. Under Rome ancient sightseeing came into its own. A papyrus (PTeb. 1. 33 = Bagnall and Derow 58) of 112 bce gives instructions to prepare for a Roman senator's visit to the *Fayūm, including titbits for the crocodiles; the colossi of *Memnon and other pharaonic monuments are encrusted with Greek and Latin graffiti.