Port of Ostia.
Previous to the reign of Claudius[322] the chief over-sea intercourse with the city was carried on by way of Puteoli, now Pozzuoli, near the Bay of Naples, about seventy miles from Rome. Here the larger description of vessels, employed in the trade of Alexandria and of Spain, discharged their cargoes; but the inconvenience and expense of land carriage became so enormous, especially upon low priced and bulky articles, such as corn, as to fully justify the cost of erecting the new port of Ostia, and the embanking and deepening of the Tiber. Half a century afterwards, the Emperor Trajan, remarkable not merely for the splendid edifices erected during his reign, in almost every part of the empire, but for the interest he took in maritime affairs, constructed, to meet the increasing wants of the provinces, the present Civita Vecchia, as well as the town and port of Ancona on the Adriatic, where may still be read an inscription on the monument of marble he raised at the extremity of the Mole, dedicating the harbour to the use of the mariners who frequented those seas.
But the port of Ostia was the most useful monument of Roman greatness in connection with shipping established by the empire, and has been described as one of the boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence.[323] The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the city was continually exposed in a winter navigation (a matter more worthy of serious consideration than the costs of transit) and in an open roadstead, had suggested to the genius of the first Cæsar this useful design, which was executed under the reign of Claudius, and finally completed under Nero. Within the artificial moles which formed its narrow entrance, and advanced far into the sea, “the largest vessels then engaged in the trade of Rome securely rode at anchor;” and in its deep and capacious basins, which were situated on the north bank of the Tiber, every facility was afforded for the discharge of their cargoes. This great work was represented on numerous coins and medals of the period, of which the following, struck by the Emperor Nero, furnishes a fair example.
But Ostia must have borne more resemblance to a wet dock of the present day than to a harbour or “port.” At the entrance was a tall tower, which served as a beacon by day, and a lighthouse by night for the guidance of vessels coming into the harbour.[324]
FOOTNOTES:
[285] Gibbon, c. 1. Horat. Od. i. 3. Tacit. Germ. c. 34.
[286] Livy, x. 2; xliii. 48. Cæs. Bell. Gall. iii. 5. Horat. Epod. i. 1.
[287] Plut. Vit. Anton. c. 66.
[288] The first Roman ships were probably little better than the boats used on the Tiber, called from their thick coarse planks Naves Caudicariæ—whence Appius Claudius, A.U.C. 489, B.C. 264, who first induced his people to fit out a fleet, obtained the name of Caudex (Senec. de Brev. Vit. 13. Varro de Vit. Rom. 11). According to Polybius a stranded Carthaginian ship was their first good model (i. 20, 21), though this is hard to reconcile with Livy, ix. 30, 38. Possibly their first ship of war was copied from one of Antium (Livy, viii. 14). The treaties with Carthage long before the Punic wars prove that the Romans had a fleet even then—though, probably, of a very inferior kind.