Photo: Dacian Captives from the Forum of Trajan, c. 112 CE, reused on the Arch of Constantine, Rome, Italy. From Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts, via JSTOR.
Roman Art & Imperial Marmor
By Ian S. Wilson
In this paper, I discuss the Roman imperial exploitation of valuable white and colored stone resources—or marmor—and the implications of their usage for public, provincial, and private arts across the Mediterranean. I argue that from the late Republic through the high Empire, Roman elites privileged marble, granite, porphyry, and other polished stones as signifiers of status, taste, and regional domination. The Roman emperors successfully employed lithic symbolism to define their exceptional status, consolidating control over quarries and building monumental marmor-clad structures that resembled their newly conquered empire. I further posit that provincial elites were quick to follow Rome, seeking imperial aid and permission to construct similarly adorned projects. Private individuals also adopted marmor as a symbol of their own tastes, decorating spaces with precious collections of real and imaginary stone. I evaluate the relationship between stone resources and Mediterranean art by first describing the monumentalization of Rome, then exploring the spread of marmor-related art across the Roman Empire. Throughout the essay, I emphasize the diversity of media impacted by imperial quarrying and the multivalent meanings assigned to white and colored stone across these media. The sum of these parts demonstrates the importance of marmor under the Roman emperors.
The exploitation of marmor by the Romans began in the late Roman Republic and early Empire, initially centering around the monumentalization of the city of Rome and resulting in the development of imperial associations for diverse stones. Marble first appeared in Rome under the largess of Metellus Macedonicus, who constructed the temple of Jupiter Stator around 146 BCE using stone from newly acquired Greece.1 In the highly competitive late Republic, other ambitious Romans followed suit, commissioning expensive votive and civic buildings across the capital. The foreign nature of marble quickly transformed this stone into a desirable material for construction. The shining surfaces of polished blocks—torn from conquered cliffs and shipped hundreds of kilometers across the Mediterranean—demonstrated power, wealth, and distinguished taste. The Romans soon developed a connoisseurship of marmor, ranking valuable white and colored stones such as marble, granite, and porphyry. Elites differentiated types of stone not only by their visual appeal but also by the difficulty of their acquisition and rarity.2 Long-distance stone importation was unique to the Roman Republic; few ancient states invested so heavily in the movement of stone, with most opting to use local materials.3 New ideas of public symbolism were formed from the character and scale of marble as the Romans consolidated power over the Mediterranean.
The Julio-Claudian dynasty capitalized on the newfound significance of marmor during their rise to power, monopolizing and controlling its extraction and use. Julius Caesar and Augustus began this process, employing Italian marble from Luna/Carrara to construct structures such as the Julian and Augustan fora (Fig. 1) and transforming Rome into a “city of marble.”4 This often-quoted phrase goes beyond the physical, however, as the use of marble across the city showed Rome to be uniquely “successful, resourceful, durable and cultivated.”5 Soon, every respectable public building was commissioned by the caesars and made from marble, inextricably connecting the material to the rulers and the Romans in general. By the reign of Claudius, moreover, every major quarry in the Mediterranean world had been seized by the imperial house. According to Alfred Hirt, these quarries were administered to some degree by the “Palatine bureaux,” which ensured the supply of large marble blocks for imperial projects.6 Many quarries were also opened under and named after the emperors: the granite quarry of Mons Claudianus in the Eastern Desert of Egypt is only one such example.7 Regal associations and lithic hierarchies were layered with the unique provenance of different stones, which, originating from distant localities, symbolized the extent of the empire. This is best demonstrated with the extraction and spoliation of stone resources from Egypt under Emperor Augustus. Molly Swetnam-Burland discusses the Montecitorio Obelisk (Fig. 2), fitted into the solarium augusti as a piece of the emperor’s monumentalization of the Campus Martius. This monument, an Egyptian Late Period granite monolith with a Latin-inscribed base of the same stone, served a similar purpose as that of marble buildings from previous decades: representing conquest and Roman ingenuity. This obelisk was also a royal and solar symbol associating Augustus with kings and his divine patron Apollo, and it acted as a symbol of Egypt—the most valuable imperial province.8 Thus Augustus and his successors finalized the transformation of public art into a lithically royal and imperial enterprise, a style to be continued by subsequent emperors.
At the height of the Roman Empire, its rulers undertook projects of unsurpassed scale, demonstrating Roman mastery over marmor. In this period, granite and porphyry from Egypt became highly prized; the surfaces of these marmor could be polished like marble, but the extreme distance of their quarries from Rome made them even more prestigious. The import of monolithic stones from Egypt was a manifestation of imperial power, as only the emperor could conduct the logistics of such a feat. Hazel Dodge emphasizes this fact in her 2016 article tracing the journey of granite columns from the Egyptian desert to Rome for use in the Hadrianic Pantheon (Fig. 3). Each marmor monolith, weighing between 84–100 tons and standing 40 Roman Feet tall, would have to descend 700 meters to sea level from the quarry at Mons Claudianus—traveling 120 kilometers overland to the Nile—then be shipped thousands of kilometers by boat to the Tiber, finishing the journey being carefully maneuvered through the narrow streets of Rome.9 Dodge states, “The point was precisely that people would know that the emperor’s granite columns were obtained through endeavors that only the imperial administration could sustain.”10 Similar logistical concerns were relevant to the construction of Trajan’s Forum, which necessitated the simultaneous import of marble from many imperial provinces. The emperor, or his architect Apollodorus of Damascus, ordered sculptures of Dacian captives (Fig. 4) in diverse marmor such as giallo antico from Numidia, breccia verde from Arabia, porphyry from Aegyptus, and pavonazzetto from Phrygia in Asia.11 These statues, arranged side by side in the largest of Rome’s imperial fora, not only celebrated the subjugation of the Dacians but also represented the other subjects of Rome at its height under the optimus princeps. Although the examples I have highlighted represent a small selection of Roman monuments from the late Republic and early Empire, they reveal the complex of meanings evoked by marmor in Roman art: imperial, geographical, logistical, and monumental. The potency of marmor constructions in imperial Rome drew the attention of ambitious provincial elites who soon sought to imitate them, and the symbolism established by exotic stones also found purchase in the world of private arts. Each of these important developments are detailed below.
As Rome became a city of marble, other wealthy Mediterranean centers attempted to emulate the grand style of the emperors. Roman public art became the language of architecture as provincial aristocrats scrambled to demonstrate their cosmopolitan taste, yet several considerations qualified the aspirations of these rising elites. First, marble and other quarried stones were incredibly difficult and expensive to transport, a difficulty amplified for cities not on the Mediterranean shore. Dodge explains the almost unthinkable logistics of transporting marmor: around 230 pairs of oxen forming a 300-meter-long train would have been needed to move one 50 RF (14.8 m) granite column.12 With some exceptions, marble projects in the provinces directly followed access to water, with smaller pieces of marmor correlating with shorter distances from the sea.13 Additionally, all significant quarries were under imperial control, meaning that any provincial city would need to ask permission for marmor. Certain stones, like the granite of Mons Claudianus and porphyry of Mons Porphrites, were reserved for imperial use only, but others could become available on request.14 Some settlements were able to circumvent these acquisition issues by using local stone, “‘substitution’ or ‘imitation’ marbles,” instead of imperial stones.15 At Hispalis, elites constructed a monumental building from marble of Almaden de La Plata, a relatively local quarry only 70 km to the north.16 Other cities were rich enough to eliminate such concerns. Elites at Palmyra, for instance, imported granite columns from Aswan to construct their tetrapylon (Fig. 5).17 For the most part, however, wealthy provincial towns sought the emperor’s placet (assent) and even his aid in their monumental projects. This arrangement worked in the favor of both parties, as exporting imperial art into other regions reinforced the power of the state.
Several impressive examples illustrate the possibilities open to elites during the high Empire. At the sanctuary of Jupiter at Baalbek (Fig. 6), regional aristocrats imported nearly 200 granite columns—with imperial participation—to construct a monumental propylon.18 The scale of quarrying and transportation, coupled with the fact that Baalbek is positioned over 1000 m above sea level, rendered this project a uniquely challenging imperial feat. Other cities, in contrast, were blessed with good geography as well as patronage. The philhellene emperor Hadrian had a particular interest in the Greek coastal centers of Athens and Smyrna, which he provided with marmor for major artistic endeavors.19 At Smyrna, an inscription commemorates “the gift of seventy-two columns of Synnadian (i.e. Phrygian) marble, twenty of Numidian marble, and six of porphyry for the ‘anointing room’ of the gymnasium.”20 The emperor also finished the famous Olympieion precinct of Athens in 132 CE, adding a diverse collection of Phygian, Thasian, and Egyptian marmor statuary (Fig. 7) to the Pentellic marble temple in a manner reminiscent of Rome itself.21 At the height of the empire, however, even lesser cities sheeted their buildings in marble veneer, commissioned marmor statues, and pieced richly colored tesserae into grand mosaics.22 Private individuals, moreover, employed diverse forms of marmor in their own spaces, transforming public symbols of grandeur into the “miniature monumentalization” of domestic and funerary luxury.
While rulers and elites decorated Mediterranean cities with monumental lithic arts, private citizens of the Roman Empire utilized marmor in their private contexts. The development of such arts began with the aspirational fantasies of first style fresco, which imitated diverse marmor in paint (Fig. 8). Some examples of this wall painting style predate marble edifices in Rome, tying into the early development of Roman interest in marmor. As monumental architecture began to transform the capital, however, subsequent fresco styles incorporated marmor flourishes such as monumental columns and entablature (Fig. 9). The development of real marble interiors and luxury items was highly influenced and even facilitated by the creation of new public complexes, as the shipment of marble and other stones was prohibitively expensive. Evidence from Dokimeion marble quarries indicates that a workshop for funerary monuments developed while Trajan heavily exploited sources of Pavonazzetto marble.23 Items such as “garland sarcophagi” (Fig. 10) were commissioned by private individuals and shipped alongside imperial stones.24 At Athens and Proconnesus, too, standardized marble sarcophagi were produced from nearby quarries and exported to purchasers across the sea.25 These funerary items were a means of displaying wealth and taste on a far smaller scale than imperial structures, employing the same language of prestige as greater arts. Marmor “left-overs” of imperial projects and smaller pieces of precious stone were also acquired by buyers in well-connected localities.26 These fragmented treasures could range wildly in size, from the sheets of marble in the triclinium of Julia Felix at Pompeii (Fig. 11) to the marble additions in the mosaic floor of naval captain Lucius Hortensius Heraclides’ shrine at Ostia (Fig. 12). Some wealthy individuals and groups also purchased custom decor for their private structures. One new art style was opus sectile, a patterning of marmor employed in imperial public buildings as well as in settings such as a domestic floor at Italica (Fig. 13). No matter the scale or expense of such projects, the meanings of stones remained tied to imperial symbolism. Bradley emphasizes this fact with the example of a Numidian marble opus sectile lion (Fig. 14), which in design and material represented the resources of Africa.27 Similar geographical, cultural, and imperial associations made even small pieces of marmor valuable. Taken together, it is clear that the architecture and art of the emperors transformed the tastes of private individuals, who integrated marble and other privileged lithic resources into their decorative repertoire.
Marmor played an important role in the art of the Roman Empire as elites transformed these valuable stones into a language of taste and power. The Roman emperors employed hierarchies of marble, granite, and porphyry to consolidate and demonstrate their rulership, emphasizing the provenance of marmor to reveal their mastery of a diverse world. Provincial aristocrats then emulated the monumental projects of the caesars with their own marmor-clad structures, often seeking imperial help in this process. Finally, throughout the period, individuals utilized the prestige of marble to demonstrate personal wealth. Though this essay covers only a few examples of public, provincial, and private Roman art, the legacy of imperial marmor exploitation is eminently clear across the Mediterranean world.
Ian S. Wilson is a Master of Philosophy student studying Classics at the University of Dublin, Trinity College. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in the William & Mary – St Andrews Joint Degree Programme, and is broadly interested in the intersections of Roman state power and human experience in the Ancient Mediterranean.
Figures
Figure 1. Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus, c. 2 BCE, Rome, Italy.
From Sites and Photos, via JSTOR.
Figure 2. Montecitorio Obelisk, erected c. 10 BCE, Rome, Italy.
From Swetnam-Burland, 2010.
Figure 3. Pantheon Porch Columns, c. 120 CE, Rome, Italy.
From the University of California, San Diego, via JSTOR.
Figure 4. Dacian Captives from the Forum of Trajan, c. 112 CE, reused on the Arch of Constantine, Rome, Italy. From Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts, via JSTOR.
Figure 5. Tetrapylon of Palmyra, Late 3rd Century CE, Palmyra, Syria.
From Haustein-Bartsch, E., Syrian Heritage Archive, 1999.
Figure 6. Propylon of the Sanctuary of Jupiter, 1st Century CE, Baalbek, Lebanon.
From the University of California, San Diego, via JSTOR.
Figure 7. Thasian Marble Statue of Hadrian, c. 132 CE, National Archaeological Museum,
Athens, Greece. From Kouremenos, 2022.
Figure 8. First Style Fresco from the Samnite House, 2nd Century BCE,
Herculaneum, Italy. From the University of Washington.
Figure 9. Second Style Fresco from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, 1st Century BCE, Boscoreale, Italy, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, USA. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Figure 10. Dokimeion Marble Garland Sarcophagus, c. 180 CE, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. From Walters Art Museum.
Figure 11. Triclinium of the House of Julia Felix, Mid 1st Century CE,
Pompeii, Italy. From the author, 2022.
Figure 12. Marble Additions to the Mosaic Floor of Lucius Hortensius Heraclides’ Shrine, 3rd Century CE, Ostia, Italy. From Ostia Antica.
Figure 13. Opus Sectile floor from the Domus of the Exedra, date uncertain, Italica, Spain.
From the author.
Figure 14. Numidian Marble Opus Sectile Lion, Porta Marina, 4th Century CE, Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo, Italy. From the International Catacomb Society.
Endnotes
- Mark Bradley, “Colour and Marble in Early Imperial Rome,” The Cambridge Classical Journal 52 (2006): 2. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000440.
- Bradley, “Colour and Marble,” 1.
- Alfred M. Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” in Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World, eds. Paul Erdkamp, Koenraad Verboven, and Arjan Zuiderhoek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 290.
- Patrizio Pensabene and Eleonora Gasparini, “Marble Quarries: Ancient Imperial Administration and Modern Scientific Analyses,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, eds. Elise A. Friedland, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski, and Elaine K. Gazda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 97–98.
- Bradley, “Colour and Marble,” 6.
- Pensabene and Gasparini, “Marble Quarries,” 98.
- Alfred M. Hirt, “The Emperor and Imperial Extractive Operations,” in Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World: Organizational Aspects 27 BC-AD 235, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010): 332–353; Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 314.
- Hirt, “The Emperor and Imperial Extractive Operations,” 338–339.
- Molly Swetnam-Burland, “‘Aegyptus Redacta’: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius,” The Art Bulletin 92, no. 3 (2010): 135–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546118. 135, 149.
- Hazel Dodge, “From Quarry to Metropolis: The Journey of an Egyptian Granite Column from Mons Claudianus in Egypt to the Pantheon in Rome,” Hermathena, no. 200/201 (2016): 196, 201. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48649656.
- Dodge, “From Quarry to Metropolis,” 211.
- Marc Waelkens, “From a Phrygian Quarry: The Provenance of the Statues of the Dacian Prisoners in Trajan’s Forum at Rome,” American Journal of Archaeology 89, no. 4 (1985): 651. https://doi.org/10.2307/504205.
- Dodge, “From Quarry to Metropolis,” 208.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 291.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 291–292.
- Pensabene and Gasparini, “Marble Quarries,” 98–100.
- Ruth Taylor et al., “The Value of Marble in Roman Hispalis: Contextual, Typological, and Lithological Analysis of an Assemblage of Large Architectural Elements Recovered at No 17 Goyeneta Street (Seville, Spain),” in Asmosia XI: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Stone, eds. Daniela Matetic Poljak and Katja Marasovic, Proceedings of the XI ASMOSIA Conference, Split, 2015, 146.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 295.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 291.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 307.
- Hirt, “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor,” 291.
- Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.18.6.
- J. B. Ward-Perkins, “Quarrying in Antiquity: Technology, Tradition and Social Change.” Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture in Proceedings of the British Academy 57, 1971 (Oxford University Press, 1973), 148.
- Waelkens, “From a Phrygian Quarry,” 651.
- Mustafa Yavuz Çelik, The Characterization of Docimian White Marble (Dokimeion-Phrygia/İscehisar-Turkey) and its Significance for Architectural Materials in Ancient Times (Afyonkarahisar: Afyon Kocatepe University Publications, 2022): 31.
- Ward-Perkins, “Quarrying in Antiquity,” 146.
- Ward-Perkins, “Quarrying in Antiquity,” 145.
- Bradley, “Colour and Marble,” 13.
Bibliography
Bradley, Mark. “Colour and Marble in Early Imperial Rome.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 52 (2006): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000440.
Çelik, Mustafa Yavuz. The Characterization of Docimian White Marble (Dokimeion-Phrygia/İscehisar-Turkey) and its Significance for Architectural Materials in Ancient Times. Afyonkarahisar: Afyon Kocatepe University Publications, 2022. 1-32.
Dodge, Hazel. “From Quarry to Metropolis: The Journey of an Egyptian Granite Column from Mons Claudianus in Egypt to the Pantheon in Rome.” Hermathena, no. 200/201 (2016): 187–217. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48649656.
Dworakowska, Angelina. Quarries in Roman provinces. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1983.
Hirt, Alfred. M. “Centurions, Quarries, and the Emperor.” In Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World, edited by Paul Erdkamp, Koenraad Verboven, and Arjan Zuiderhoek, 280–314. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Hirt, Alfred M. “The Emperor and Imperial Extractive Operations.” In Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World: Organizational Aspects 27 BC-AD 235, 332–356. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kouremenos, Anna. “‘The City of Hadrian and not of Theseus’: A Cultural History of Hadrian’s Arch.” In The Province of Achaea in the 2nd Century CE, edited by Anna Kouremenos, 346–374. Routledge, 2022.
Pausanias. Description of Greece.
Pensabene, Patrizio, and Eleonora Gasparini. “Marble Quarries: Ancient Imperial Administration and Modern Scientific Analyses.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, edited by Elise A. Friedland, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski, and Elaine K. Gazda, 93-106. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Russell, Ben. The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Russell, Ben. “Stone Quarries Database.” The Oxford Roman Economy Project, 2005–2024. http://www.romaneconomy.ox.ac.uk/databases/stone_quarries_database/.
Swetnam-Burland, Molly. “‘Aegyptus Redacta’: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius.” The Art Bulletin 92, no. 3 (2010): 135–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546118.
Taylor, Ruth, et al. “The Value of Marble in Roman Hispalis: Contextual, Typological, and Lithological Analysis of an Assemblage of Large Architectural Elements Recovered at No 17 Goyeneta Street (Seville, Spain).” In Asmosia XI: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Stone, edited by Daniela Matetic Poljak and Katja Marasovic, 143–153. Proceedings of the XI ASMOSIA Conference, Split, 2015.
Waelkens, Marc. “From a Phrygian Quarry: The Provenance of the Statues of the Dacian Prisoners in Trajan’s Forum at Rome.” American Journal of Archaeology 89, no. 4 (1985): 641–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/504205.
Ward-Perkins, J. B. “Quarrying in Antiquity: Technology, Tradition and Social Change.” Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture in Proceedings of the British Academy 57, 1971. Oxford University Press, 1973. 137–158.
Image Credits
Figure 1. Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus, Rome, Italy.
From Sites and Photos, via JSTOR.
https://www.JSTOR.org/stable/community.15227471
Figure 2. Montecitorio Obelisk, Rome, Italy.
Swetnam-Burland, Molly. “‘Aegyptus Redacta’: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius.” in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 92, No. 3. College Art Association, 2010. 135-153.
Figure 3. Pantheon Porch Columns, Rome, Italy.
From the University of California, San Diego, via JSTOR.
https://www.JSTOR.org/stable/community.13929939
Figure 4. Dacian Captives from the Forum of Trajan, reused on the Arch of Constantine, Rome, Italy. From Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts, via JSTOR.
https://www.JSTOR.org/stable/community.14665279
Figure 5. Tetrapylon of Palmyra, Syria.
From Eva Haustein-Bartsch, Syrian Heritage Archive, 1999.
https://syrian-heritage.org/palmyra-tetrapylon-rose-granite-columns-from-aswan-3rd-century/
Figure 6. Propylon of the Sanctuary of Jupiter at Baalbek.
From the University of California, San Diego, via JSTOR.
https://www.JSTOR.org/stable/community.13926938
Figure 7. Thasian Marble Statue of Hadrian, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. Kouremenos, Anna. “‘The City of Hadrian and not of Theseus’: A Cultural History of Hadrian’s Arch.” in Kouremenos, Anna (ed.) The Province of Achaea in the 2nd Century CE. Routledge, 2022. 346-374.
Figure 8. First Style Fresco from the Samnite House, Herculaneum, Italy.
From the University of Washington.
Figure 9. Second Style Fresco from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, Italy, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, USA.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247017
Figure 10. Dokimeion Marble Garland Sarcophagus, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. From Walters Art Museum.
https://art.thewalters.org/detail/30186/garland-sarcophagus/
Figure 11. Triclinium of the House of Julia Felix, Pompeii, Italy.
From the author, 2022.
Figure 12. Marble Additions to the Mosaic Floor of Lucius Hortensius Heraclides’ shrine at Ostia. From Ostia Antica.
Figure 13. Opus Sectile floor from the Domus of the Exedra, Italica, Spain.
From the author, 2023.
Figure 14. Numidian Marble Opus Sectile Lion, Porta Marina, Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo, Italy. From the International Catacomb Society.
https://www.catacombsociety.org/opus-sectile/nggallery/image/16601