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Scene of transport by wagon

Plaster cast of the original (late 3rd century A.D.)
c. 1930
Rome, Museo della Civiltą Romana
Inv. M.C.R. 3474

 

A sturdy farm wagon with wheels devoid of spokes is carrying a great leather wineskin (culleus) made of oxen hide. A culleus could hold 524 litres of wine, as much as 20 amphorae. The original sarcophagus is now in the Vatican Museums.

APPROFONDIMENTI

The wineskin and the barrel

In Etruria, Lazio and Campania, the favourite means of transporting wine overland was for years the culleus, an enormous wineskin made of oxen hide, holding over 500 litres, mounted on a wagon. It was only in the 4th century A.D. that representations of wagons carrying barrels became common, also in the frescoes of Roman catacombs, confirming the definitive demise of the wine amphora, superseded by a more economical and functional storage system that was to last to our own day.