ROMAN GARLAND SARCOPHAGI — WARD PERKINS 461 



workshops of the West, seem to have been content to produce rec- 

 tangular, coffin -shaped blocks, without attempting to give them any 

 more finished form. But the two other major centers of production 

 for export, Attica and Proconnesus, both in varying degrees adopted 

 the methods of prefabrication that had proved so successful in the 

 architectural market. In the case of the fine figured sarcophagi of 

 Attica, examples of which were shipped all over the Mediterranean, 

 it is clear that in a great many, very possibly in all, cases the figured 

 designs were sketched on the sarcophagus in low relief before despatch. 

 All that remained was for the carving to be completed on receipt, 

 either by skilled workmen who accompanied an individual consign- 

 ment, or by workshops established in the major receiving centers in 

 the provinces (6) — an ingenious compromise, whereby the work- 

 shops of Attica were able to make the fullest and most economical 

 use of the local resources of skilled craftsmanship upon which the 

 quality of their products ultimately depended, while at the same time 

 avoiding the damage to fine detail that would certainly have taken 

 place had these massive but fragile objects been shipped fully carved. 



The workshops of Proconnesus were less ambitious. They adopted 

 a system whereby the broad lines of the finished design were estab- 

 lished before despatch, but considerable latitude was left to the re- 

 ceiving workshop as to the working-out of the design. In the case of 

 one widely distributed series, all that the quarry did was to shape the 

 body and lid, the former as a plain rectangular trough, the latter to 

 the roughed-out outline of a gable roof with acroteria, just as we see 

 it on the back and one end of the lid of the Smithsonian sarcophagus. 

 Sarcophagi so shaped were widely used locally, in Thrace and north- 

 western Asia Minor; and they were exported in large numbers to 

 the Danube provinces and northern Italy, and as far afield as southern 

 France (7). The advantage of this particular design was that it 

 greatly reduced the weight, and therefore the cost, of transport, while 

 leaving wide latitude to the importing workshop to develop the super- 

 ficial ornament in accordance with local taste. 



The series to which the Smithsonian and the Bryn Mawr sarcophagi 

 belong was more specialized. Here, in addition to shaping the lid, 

 the quarry workshops also roughed out the body to the simple design 

 illustrated on plate 4, figure 1, a sarcophagus now in the grounds of 

 the American University at Beirut. There were minor variations 

 from one sarcophagus to the next. The design might be carved on 

 all four faces, or alternatively on three only, leaving the back plain; 

 the central motif on the front might be a panel destined to carry an 

 inscription or it might be just another circular boss, like those within 

 the two flanking loops; or again, the upper molding might be omitted 

 altogether, indicating presumably that the dimensions of the parent 



