Back to section: The routes of Dionysus

Scene of transporting an amphora

Plaster cast of the original (1st century A.D.)
c. 1930
Rome, Museo della Civiltą Romana
Inv. M.C.R. 3525

 

This relief carving served as signboard for the makers of sacci vinarii (wine sacks), and was originally walled into the corner pillar of the building they occupied in Pompeii.

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barrels became common, also in the frescoes of Roman catacombs, confirming the definitive demise of the wine amphora, superseded by a more economical and functional storage system that was to last to our own day.