AMPHORAS, ARRETINE, BRICKS, AND HORACE ODES 1.4

Elizabeth Lyding Will

As is by now well-known, archaeological research has made it possible to identify Cosa and its adjacent port as the home of the wine and fish-sauce industry of the politically powerful Roman Sestius family. Sestius amphora stamps abound in the Cosa area and in Gaul, to which the Sestii sent most of their wine from the latter third century to the middle of the first century BC. Following the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC and the ensuing proscription and (in 39) amnesty of L. Sestius, who became consul suffectus in 23 BC, the Sestius firm diversified into the manufacture of stamped tableware and probably stamped lamps. L. Sestius was among the first Romans to manufacture fired bricks. His close friend and fellow Republican, the poet Horace, honored him in 23 by dedicating to him his Fourth Ode. In the poem, Horace alludes in appropriately ambiguous, poetic terms to the wealth of the Sestii, to the pottery kilns at Cosa, to the ships being prepared in the harbor for the voyage to Gaul, and to the turreted villas typical of the Cosa area. With words, he paints a bird's-eye view of Cosa as it would have looked in its heyday.

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