Roman Marble Trade: Identifying the Quarries of the Mediterranean

Introduction: The Stone of Empire Augustus famously boasted that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. To achieve this unprecedented architectural transformation, the Roman Empire developed a massive, highly organized logistical network, extracting millions of tons of decorative stone from across the Mediterranean basin. Marble was not merely a building material; it was a potent symbol of imperial power, wealth, and the subjugation of distant provinces. Transporting monolit