At the Games

Hundreds of fragmentary glass cups preserve labeled representations of the empire’s leading sports stars, especially charioteers and gladiators. This mold-blown glassware illustrates how imagery common on popular terracotta plaques and lamps was adapted for upright translucent vessel walls. Comparing scenes reveals an important difference: whereas chariots are shown racing around the track’s monument-filled dividing line, gladiators compete without any indication of setting. When the cups are glimpsed at a utilitarian angle (45 degrees), they represent the events as they appeared from inclined stands and conjure the visual experience of spectacular entertainment. Most examples have been documented in the northwest provinces; in funerary, religious, and domestic contexts; and in places that did necessarily possess sports venues. Previously considered tools of Romanization or mementoes brought home from games, they were more likely commodities that found success in a competitive market for tableware by offering virtual experiences of the games in miniature.

Along the Border

A series of colorfully enameled metal vessels name forts along Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. They preserve creative responses to one of the empire’s most ambitious construction projects, a complex fortification system that was never represented in official art. Three well-preserved vessels have been recorded in England and northern France, and more fragmentary examples continue to be registered with England’s Portable Antiquities Scheme. The designs of this expanding corpus draw on six key elements: a vessel shape popular throughout the empire; enameling technology associated with the Celtic peoples of the empire’s northern lands; letters of the Latin alphabet; place names in the Celtic language; a fortified wall motif with precedents in Hellenistic court mosaics; and a triskel motif common in Celtic metalwork. These intricate portrayals conjure a place that was far more than a wall, while illustrating the entangled aesthetics of an evolving borderland.

By the Sea

The Bay of Naples boasted not only a leading Mediterranean port, Puteoli (Pozzuoli), but also the imperial court’s favorite spa, Baiae (Baia). About a dozen glass bottles bear labeled images of these two waterfront cities. These cityscapes are unprecedented in the empire’s portable arts. As documents, they have proven useful to archaeologists parsing terrain disrupted by ongoing seismic activity and continuous occupation. This chapter connects their innovative designs to the empire’s broader visual culture, and then tracks their circulation beyond the bay to documented findspots in Ostia, Populonia, Emerita (Mérida), Asturica (Astorga), and Colonia Ara Claudia Aggripinensium (Cologne). The bottles’ complex communication facilitated urban comparisons: they are one way that people in one place might come to know another. They therefore gave viewers abroad a new sense of their own place in Rome’s globalized empire.

Conclusion

The Conclusion reviews the role of material culture in mediating imaginations of place in the Roman empire, with reference to the Itinerary Cups describing journeys from Spain to Rome, the Spectacle Cups depicting chariot racing and gladiatorial combat, the Fort Pans documenting Hadrian’s Wall, and the Bay Bottles visualizing Baiae and Puteoli. To demonstrate the flexibility of the book’s analytical framework, two final sets of artifacts are presented. One focuses on spectacle souvenirs that were made in Roman Spain and include the date of the event and the name of its sponsor with unusual specificity. The other is an ornamental metal vessel that was excavated in a distant province, yet was created in workshops around Rome’s Circus Flaminius and bears that place name as a mark of prestigious craftmanship. Whereas the book’s introduction constructed an interdisciplinary analytical framework, the Conclusion reconsiders the place of material culture in Roman studies.

On the Road

Otherwise known as the Vicarello Cups, these four vessels have been studied for their engraved itineraries, rather than for their materiality and design. At a time when pictorial maps existed but were rarely used for travel, such itineraries instrumentalized mobility through formulaic lists of destinations and distances. The place names evoke the journey’s multilingual soundscape, while also offering a framework for comparing sites connected by the Roman road system and its milestones (which the cups resemble). The Vicarello itineraries begin in Gades (Cádiz, Spain) and end in Rome, after passing through such famous sites as Tarragona, Nîmes, Arles, and Rimini. The chapter argues that the sumptuous silver cups, rather than being travel tools themselves, commemorate aspirational mobility. The cups’ owners are unknown, but the trajectories of the texts can be connected to a long history of provincial influence on Rome.

Introduction

The Introduction addresses the emerging study of Roman souvenirs and establishes a new framework for their analysis. Whereas prior studies have valuably considered the role of Roman souvenirs in curating memory and their relation to modern memorabilia, this book explores how their craftsmanship relates to perceptions of place. The book’s four case studies focus on artifacts that conjure particular destinations through a combination of words and images. These artifacts are simultaneously portable works of art and material texts. They can be held in the hand yet they evoke monumental buildings, cities, frontiers, and roads. They are Roman, Italian, and provincial in their sites of production and use. The book’s interdisciplinary analysis therefore draws on theories of place, globalization, materiality, and multi-sensory experience in order to answer the following question: how did souvenirs allow residents of the Roman empire to be in one place while imagining another?