Standard freighter of the Roman merchant fleet, the Oneraria inspired the Corbita, much more massive

In some respects, antiquity still surprises us by certain aspects of a great modernity. For example, it is generally believed that in the maritime field, container ships date from the 1950s. However, the concept of boarding food of all kinds, liquid and solid in identical terracotta jars, standardized to the extreme, is indeed a very old practice, born of the practice of the Phoenicians, taken over by the Greeks , Then the Romans. Certainly an amphora is more modest than a modern container, but still well suited to storage in the frail merchant ships of the time.