Etiam in tempore hiberno: stagionalità della navigazione nel Mediterraneo e functio navicularia. Note a margine di C.Th. 13.5.26-27 e 34 e C.Th. 13.9.3

It is the long-standing belief among classical scholars that seafaring on the ancient Mediterranean was highly seasonal in nature: the winter-time was regarded as ‘out-of-season’ for Greek and Roman seafarers — the period of mare clausum, the ‘closed sea’. This assumption underlies and permeates our present understanding of Graeco-Roman maritime activities and has gone all-but unchallenged by histori-ans and archaeologists. A survey of Roman sources reveals that this notion is only partially correct. In times of military, political or economic necessity, both warships and trading merchantmen were required to occasionally sail across the wintertime Mediterranean, and numerous exemptions to mare clausum have been teased out of ancient texts by historians. The emperor Claudius, for example, decided personally to assume the risk that was normally assumed by shipowners in winter in order to encourage them to devote themselves to annona freight. Fourth-century AD regulations stimulated longer trade cycles of up to two years, to final destina-tion for the navicularii involved in annonarian and fiscal transportation.