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.