(1m).
L/B:
180 od/114 keel × 45+ (54.9m/`34.7m × 13.7m). Tons:
1,200-1,300 burden. Hull:
wood. Built:
2nd cent. ce.
In The Ship, or The Wishes, the Greek writer Lucian of Samosata (about 120-180 ce) describes a giant ship, part of the fleet that carried Egyptian grain from Alexandria to Rome. Blown off course, Isis put in at Piraeus, the port of Athens, where it drew a crowd of onlookers. Though the passage occurs in a work of fiction, it is likely that Isis was a real ship. The appearance of this huge grain-carrier apparently created a minor sensation in Athens, and provided Lucian with a topical setting for his satire. The description is put in the mouth of Samippus, one of the characters in Lucian's story:
What a big ship! A hundred and twenty cubits long, the shipwright said, well over a quarter as wide, and from the deck to the deepest part of the bilge, twenty-nine. And what a tall mast, what a yardarm to carry! What a forestay to hold it up! How gently the stern curves up, with a little golden goose below! But at the opposite end, the prow juts right out, with the goddess Isis—after whom the ship is named—on either side. And the other adornments, the paintings, and the owner's pennant bright as fire! In the bow the anchors, capstans and windlasses, and on the poop the cabins—it all seems wonderful to me. You'd guess that the crew numbers a legion. They say she carries enough grain to feed all Attica for a year.
The captain tells another character how the ship ended at Piraeus after seventy days of foul winds and storms. As Lionel Casson points out, the passage provides important information on the route normally taken by the grain fleet: north northeast from Alexandria, passing to the west of Cyprus, then westward along the south coast of Asia Minor as far as Rhodes or Cnidus. From there, the captain meant to sail south of Crete, avoiding dangerous Cape Malea, then presumably west northwest towards Malta then north through the Straits of Messina. The captain explained that Isis "should have been in Italy by now," if they had "kept Crete to starboard and sailed beyond Malea."
Lucian gives fairly specific dimensions: the Isis is 120 cubits (180 feet) in length, more than a quarter of that (45 feet) in beam, and 29 cubits (43.5 feet) from the deck to bottom of the hold at its deepest. Based on these figures, Casson has calculated her capacity at 1,200 to 1,300 tons—a figure not at all improbable given the scale of the Roman grain trade, the skill of Roman shipwrights, and the collateral evidence from excavated underwater sites such as the
Albenga wreck. After the fall of Rome, merchant vessels of this size were not built again in the west until the carracks of the sixteenth century.
Casson, "The Isis and Her Voyage." Lucian of Samosata, The Ship, or The Wishes.
