Portus Traiani (Portus Traiani Felicis)

About

Trajan's inland hexagonal harbor basin, roughly 32 ha in area and about 716 m across, dug inland (southeast) of the exposed Claudian basin and connected to it and to the Tiber by canals, giving ships a sheltered anchorage safe from the open-sea storms that had damaged Portus Claudii. Construction ran c. 100-112 CE; the basin and its surrounding warehouse quays were functional and in full operation well before Trajan's death, squarely extant and in active use at the 117 CE snapshot. Together with the older Claudian basin it formed 'Portus Augusti et Traiani Felicis.' Coordinates from Pleiades' place record for the Trajanic harbor.

What happened here

Sailing season runs roughly from spring to autumn and the port lives by it. Ships anchor in the outer basin and warp in, or are unloaded by lighters if they draw too much. Cargo comes ashore under the eye of a customs officer taking a percentage, is weighed, and goes into warehouses along the quay. Grain for Rome is the priority and everything else waits behind it. Amphorae are stacked, checked, and the broken ones dumped. Gangs of porters work by the load; shipping agents and guild offices cluster round the harbour square, advertising routes in mosaic on the floor. Divers work the bottom for dropped cargo. In winter the ships are hauled out and the whole place goes quiet.

In ancient writing

• Juvenal, Satires 12.75–82

  A ship works its way into the inner basin past the harbour arms and the tower — water calmer, the poet says, than any lake.

Sources

• https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/927235843
• https://www.ostia-antica.org/introduction/portus-trajan.htm
• https://www.ostia-antica.org/portus/t001.htm
• https://www.portusproject.org/periods/trajanic/
• Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 2nd ed. 1973), ch. on Portus