The administration and management of sea ports underthe Roman Empire remain a puzzling mystery. In afundamental paper, George Houston reached at leasttwo essential conclusions. Both are worth quoting:we are justified in concluding that necessary workin these ports – for example, building of and repairto breakwaters and docks, provision of storagefacilities, and regulation of commercial activities– was ordinarily accomplished through a combinationof Imperial subvention, local administration, andprivate initiative.

This is the first book to arise from aninterdisciplinary initiative, the RomanMediterranean Ports project, which seeks a holisticunderstanding of early Imperial ports by addressinga range of key questions relating to theircharacter, organization and roles.1 Thegeographical centrality of the Mediterranean to theRoman Empire, which was without precedent and hasnot been matched subsequently, helped enable itspolitical integrity for well over 400 years. By theearly first century AD, Rome had come to dominateall of the shores surrounding the Mediterranean,transforming its constituent seas into a uniquemaritime space. Interconnected commercial networkscriss-crossed its many islands and micro-regions,enabling provincial communities to maintain intensecommercial relationships with Rome at the centre ofthe mare nostrum,although debates continue to rage over their scaleand the nature of theirorganization.2

From small fishermen to tradesmen, port societies werecomposed of a broad range of occupations, whichbrought differing levels of income and prestige tothose who practised them. Literary sources onlymention a limited number of port activities, oftensituated at both ends of the social hierarchy, inparticular the traders at the top and the fishermenat the bottom. Epigraphic sources allow us to bemore specific about this hierarchy. First, far frombeing generalizing, they refer to particular portcontexts, even if all the information is notavailable. Moreover, the inscriptions were oftencreated by professionals themselves or by people whowere in contact with them and who probably knew thembetter than the élite who wrote about them. Theinscriptions also have the advantage of using aprecise vocabulary that allows us to know about theexistence of some activities that are unknown inliterary sources. This is an advantage, but it canalso be an inconvenience, because without anyreference in literature it is sometimes difficult toknow the exact meaning of the Latin words.Difficulties in determining the meaning of a wordcan also be encountered with well-documented words,like navicularius,something that makes us realize how important it isto take into account the contexts in which a word isemployed. The aim of this chapter is to try to findclues for hierarchical relationships betweendifferent attested occupations. Are there anyactivities that are more prestigious than others, orthat allow their members a better degree of socialmobility? Alternatively, do some activities condemnthose who practise them to remain at the bottom ofthe social scale? Is the hierarchy of occupationsidentical at each port?

Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have discussed if Greek athletes were ‘amateurs’ or ‘professionals’. Analysing the ancient evidence on time, money, social status and group identity, this article argues that neither of the two terms helps in understanding the social reality of ancient athletes.

Dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of small boats operatedinside or in the svrroundings of the greatest portsof the Roman West. They towed sea-going ships ortranshipped their cargo. These working boats alsoconnected different elements of port-systems byproviding transportation between inner and outerharbours, or between maritime and fluvial ports.Archaeological evidence for these activities isbecoming more and more abundant with the discoveryof shipwrecks. For instance, the Arles-Rhône 3 boatwas carrying stone, probably towards the Camargue insouthern Gaul, when it sank in the Rhône during theFlavian era. On its return journey it might havetransported imports from outer sea ports to theriver port of Arles. The boatmen from the Rhônedelta thus connected maritime navigation andlong-distance river navigation. Indeed, the nautae of the Rhône and theDurance took charge of the latter upstream fromArles. Ostia and Portus also provide greatarchaeological evidence which has been recentlystudied by Giulia Boetto.

We now know that in Classical Athens there were as many as 200 occupations. This essay shows that not all occupations enjoyed an equal amount of status and prestige. Four occupations are studied: actors, especially those in the Associations of Dionysiac Artists, philosophers, doctors, and sculptors. These occupations required extensive training and acquired some features associated with modern professions.

When we are trying to imagine what the world of thewarehouse was like in the last few centuries of theRepublic and the first three of the Empire, we haveto consider a particular type of storehouse andeconomic context at a time when commercial exchangesin the ports in which goods were stocked andredistributed reached their apogee. This was a timewhen ports were centres of constant activity inwhich goods were stored and redistributed andcommercial exchange was at its height.

The Latin words navicularii and nauclari and the Greek ναύκληροι or naucleri provide us with aninteresting case study of epigraphic evidence. It isvery illustrative of the opportunities that thisevidence offers, as well as its limits of inference,and the amount of work still necessary for a soundunderstanding of its meaning. The corpus of knowntexts raises several issues. The first one is thesmall number of epigraphic occurrences of thesewords. Almost 90 individuals and more than 60mentions of groups may be considered to be asignificant corpus (Table 5). It is quite a smallnumber, however, if compared to the some 600inscriptions mentioning negotiantes, negotiatores and πραγματευόμενοι, or the45 inscriptions mentioning naukleroi on the island of Delos alonein the pre-Imperial period. Occurrences of maritimeshippers remain suprisingly rare given the largenumber of ports in the Empire and the time span ofc. 500 years underconsideration. Notwithstanding the presence of anumber of major coastal ports, the epigraphy of theRoman Near East has provided a very large number ofcitations relating to occupations, but has onlyproduced two naukleroi, one at Askalon, the other atAradus in a late inscription, although threeLevantine naukleroiare recorded in other geographical areas and ports.The reasons for such an epigraphic silence are worthexploring.

My starting point is a scholarly mess. A few years ago,I came across a very special Latin inscription. Itwas reportedly found ‘pochi anni fa’ (as of 1995) inthe harbour of Rhodes during some reconstruction andenlargement work. It was described as a column ofwhite marble, 220 cm high, with a diameter of 125cm, ‘testimonianza marmorea della lex Rhodia de iactuproveniente da un antico edificio portuale di Rodi’.According to the first editor, the Greek legalscholar Giorgio S. Marcou, it reads, in ‘six orseven lines’ (?): LEX RODIA [sic] CAVETVR (sic) VT (sic) SI LEVANDAE NAVIS GRATIA IACTVS(sic) MERCIVM FACTVM(sic) EST ONIVM(sic) CONTRIBVTIONESARCITVR (sic) QVODPRO OMNIBVS DATVM EST.