CLASSICAL GREEK TRADE 369
or silver inlay,^157 and quickly became as widely distributed as Attic red-figure
ware,^158 paving the way for the Roman terra sigillata industry.
The furniture manufacturing business of Demosthenes’ father, usingimported ivory and wood, was large enough to employ twenty slave craftsmen
(Dem. 27.9-11), and will hardly have been unique. Unlike eighteenth-century
or Victorian England, the Greek design aesthetic was simple, elegant, and appro-
priate for a broad market. The most expensive furniture was decorated with
ivory, silver, or Corinthian bronze accents,^159 or created from prized imported
woods, but otherwise did not differ dramatically in design from the furniture
of the middle classes.^160 Although businesses like Demosthenes’ will have found
ready markets for their products outside of Athens from the many merchants
thronging the Piraeus, other centers are highlighted by our sources. Aegina
became famous for a special alloy of bronze, used not only in sculpture, but
also to manufacture the upper parts of bronze candelabra.^161 Delos is described
by Pliny (HN 33.144; 34.9) as an important center for the manufacture of
couches, as can now be confirmed by excavations on the island, which have
revealed moulds for casting bronze couch fittings of Faust I and II types, found
so far in Southwest Asia Minor, Greece, the Kuban basin, and Italy.^162 The mar-
itime trade in furniture is documented not only by stylistic means, but can be
demonstrated from shipwreck evidence. Found off the coast of Carthage and
tentatively dated to the second or first century BCE, the Mahdia wreck is one
of the most spectacular and best studied of Greco-Roman shipwrecks carry-
ing furniture, as well as fine art objects and luxurious home furnishings,^163 but
quite a few such ships have now been excavated.^164 In addition to the cargo
of couches already noted, a wide range of products were being carried on
the Mahdia ship: ingots of raw metal from the Iberian mines;^165 sixty-seven
unfluted marble columns and numerous capitals, representing approximately
230 tons alone; elaborate carved marble craters and candelabra; a wheeled
bronze brazier, fine bronze lamps, and a large cast bronze herm, nearly iden-
tical to another from the Getty; and small grotesque statuettes which reveal
clever techniques for producing large numbers of nearly identical but unique
sculptures by re-fashioning the wax models.^166
Such shipwrecks provide important evidence for the extent of the trade infurnishings, housewares, and metal goods,^167 but only hint at the full extent of
the potential demand. For this one needs to look at the unique situation of
Pompeii and Herculaneum, communities abandoned with many of their pos-
sessions intact and then buried.^168 In addition to untold thousands of metal
vessels and tools of bronze and iron,^169 there are innumerable small and even
life-size statues of bronze and marble, many products of Greek, particularly
Athenian,^170 workshops. This industry of producing small decorative statu-
ettes in bronze, marble, or terracotta seems to have really begun to take off
in the Hellenistic, rather than the Roman, era^171 although thousands of small