466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



shipboard, without any costly land transport, they must have been 

 one of the cheapest items of their quality available. 



Rather than the artistic qualities or the social significance of these 

 sarcophagi, however, it is the evidence which, in common with many 

 other aspects of the marble trade, they yield of Roman economic or- 

 ganization that makes them of particular interest to ourselves. They 

 show that the methods of standardized production and pref abrication 

 which we are apt to regard as a discovery peculiar to the present me- 

 chanical age have ample precedent in antiquity. As so often when one 

 comes to examine the detail of almost any aspect of Roman achieve- 

 ment, one is brought vividly up against the fact of its essential 

 modernity. 



NOTES 



1. For information about, and facilities for studying, these two sarcophagi 

 the writer is indebted to the authorities of the institutions concerned ; also, for 

 much valuable help, to Karl S. Brown, Prof. Howard Comfort, Perry B. Cott, 

 Harold W. Parsons, M. Henri Seyrig, Prof. Lily Ross Taylor, and Cornelius 

 Vermeule. 



2. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii, 1, 15*=iii, Suppl. 1, 6694. 



3. ii, 8, 10 ; cf . Pliny, Hist. Nat, xxxvi, 47. 



4. For sarcophagi, see Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3268, 3282, and 

 Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes, 1464, 1465 (all from 

 Smyrna) ; Arif Miifid Mansel, Excavations and researches at Perge (Turk Tarih 

 Kurumu Yayinlarindan, ser. 5, No. 8), p. 4, No. 4 (at Perge, in Pamphylia), 1949, 

 Ankara. 



5. For this reorganization see the article "Tripolitania and the Marble Trade" 

 cited in Bibliographical Note, p. 467. 



6. See the article "The Hippolytus Sarcophagus from Trinquetaille" cited 

 in Bibliographical Note p. 467. 



7. They are common, for example, in the cemeteries of Aquileia and Concordia. 

 The example illustrated in plate 6, figure 1, is characteristic of those found in 

 the cemeteries of Byzantium (Constantinople), which were commonly left rough, 

 as received from the quarry, with one or more small carved or inscribed panels 

 cut in the principal face. The two details of the same sarcophagus (pi. 6, figs. 

 2 and 3) illustrate very clearly the successive stages of dressing the marble: 

 with a coarse punch, to shape the whole block ; with a slightly finer punch, to 

 rough out the right-hand panel (which for some reason was never fully carved) 

 and to prepare a more level surface for the carving of the left-hand panel ; 

 with a claw chisel, for the triangular panels on either side of the inscription 

 (the secondary surfaces of a sarcophagus were often left at this stage) ; and 

 a smooth chisel for the carved detail. For a recent discussion of this group, 

 see A. M. Mansel, Belleten, vol. 21, p. 395 ff. 



8. G. Mendel, Musees Imperiaux Ottomans : catalogue des sculptures grecques 

 romaines et byzantines, vol. 1, No. 26, pp. 109-114, 1912, and vol. 3, No. 1170, 

 pp. 412-414, 1914. 



9. Ibid., vol. 3, No. 1159, pp. 397-399. 



10. The greater part of the Alexandrian series has been well, though not very 

 accessibly, published by E. Breccia in Le Musee Greco-romain (Municipality 

 d'Alexandrie) 1922-1923, pp. 10-19, 1924, Alexandria; see also subsequent vol- 

 umes in the same series, variously titled, for the periods 1925-31 (Breccia), 

 1932-33 and 1935-39 (A. Adriani) ; and A. Rowe, Illustrated London News, June 

 25, 1949, p. 893. 



