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Gallery 21 • Greece and Rome
The Local and the Global
The ancient Mediterranean of the first millennium BC
and early first millennium AD was a well-connected world.
Craftsmen needed links, sometimes with distant places, to
acquire raw materials; traders capitalised on people’s desire
to showcase their identity and status by acquiring exotic
goods.
Raw materials
Raw materials had to be
brought from quarries or
mines. The Eleusis Caryatid
is made of local marble
brought down the slopes
of Mount Pendeli on roads
that had been constructed
around 450 BC to transport
marble to build the
Parthenon in Athens. But
the Strigil Sarcophagus uses
Proconnesian marble from
the Sea of Marmara (Turkey),
Pentelic marble Caryatid from Eleusis.
and was probably roughed
Made about 50 B.C. (GR.1.1865)
out in the quarry to make it
lighter before being shipped to Greece for fine carving. This
was one of Roman sculptors’ favourite stones, which was
transported for working in Italy and elsewhere in the Roman
Empire.
Proconnesian marble ‘Strigil Sarcophagus’ found in Italy. Made about AD 200-300 (GR.46.1850)
Metals too were unevenly distributed across the accessible
world. The numerous bronze statuettes and other objects
could not have been made without tin as well as copper.
The entire bronze industry depended on establishing
access to the very few known tin mines, including mines in
Cornwall. Gold had a cachet all over the ancient world, but it
seems not to have been mined in Egypt, so that the gold for
a pair of earrings made in Egypt (Case 10, no.35) must have
come from elsewhere, perhaps from further down the Nile
or from the rich gold mines of northern Greece. The trade in
metal was often dependent on private initiatives, but much
stone for buildings was provided through state intervention.
Local and exotic
appeal
Craftsmen often used these raw
materials to make objects for
local use, but a great many of the
objects here were transported
long distances before use.
Between about 750 and 550
BC, small perfume pots made in
Corinth (Case 2) were shipped
throughout the Aegean, Italy and
Sicily. By around 550 BC, large
A perfume jar made in Corinth about
620-590 BC, and found at Camirus on
quantities of Athenian pottery
Rhodes. Case 2 no. 35 (GR.41.1865)
were also being exported to
Italy – much of it ending up in Etruscan tombs as a means
of marking the status of the deceased. The exotic origin of
the pottery lent it prestige. Most of the Athenian pottery
on show here (Cases 4, 6 and 7) comes from such tombs –
hence its extraordinary preservation.
The Impact of Empire
In the Roman empire, the movement of goods was markedly
increased. Relatively ordinary pottery made in Italy, Gaul
or Africa was distributed widely (see Case 12), and the
market in sculpture became international. This head from
Alexandria in Egypt of ‘philosopher-emperor’ Marcus
Aurelius is made of Proconnesian marble from modern
Turkey. Materials for building and decoration, too, were
transported long distances,
particularly in the wake of
Roman taste for coloured stone
(seen in this gallery in the
elaborate lion-head table legs).
The many colours of a Roman
city displayed Rome’s world
domination.
In the first millennium BC
the Mediterranean had been
marked by strongly regional
identities. The lead soldiers and
Proconnesian marble head of Marcus
Aurelius found in Alexandria. Made
goddess figures in Case 5 are
about AD 161-180. (GR.10.1850)
unique to sanctuaries in and
near Sparta. But in the Roman world of the first millennium
AD a common material culture was the glue of the Roman
empire. Understanding where the objects in this gallery
were made and found helps to understand the changing
economic, political and social map of the Mediterranean.
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