LEICESTER, England (Reuters) - Roman emperors knew how to treat their
skilled workers, paying them high wages and providing them with a diet that
would not go amiss in a modern top class restaurant, a scientist said on
Monday.
"Increasingly we are realizing that Romans did not solely use slaves and
prisoners for their heavy labor. They relied heavily on skilled labor,
paying them and feeding them well," University of Leicester archaeologist
Marijke van der Veen said.

Her revelations to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (
news - web sites)'s annual festival follow the first ever excavations at
two of ancient Rome's key quarries deep in the desert south of Cairo.

The quarry complex at Mons Claudianus, 300 miles south of Cairo and 75
miles east of the Nile, supplied the stone for the portico of the
Parthenon, among other buildings, while purple stone from the adjacent Mons
Porphyrites was used for statues.

Purple was the imperial color kept exclusively for the use of nobility,
making the Porphyrite stone highly prized.

Van der Veen estimated it would have taken between five and eight days
traveling on camels and donkeys to get from the Nile to the quarries.

"Because they are so remote, we assumed we would find the workers, stone
masons and soldiery in the garrison lived on a diet of just a few staples,"
she told reporters.

But examination of the refuse tips near the quarries where rubbish has been
preserved almost as it was the day it was discarded because of the arid
conditions proved quite the contrary.

Sifting through the piles of refuse, van der Veen and her fellow
archaeologists found the remains of more than 50 types of food plants and
the bones of 20 species of animals.

The team found evidence of olives, grapes, artichokes, bread, olive oil,
onions, garlic, snails, oysters, piglets, chickens, eggs, large quantities
of fish, green vegetables such as cabbages, water melons, peaches and many
types of nuts.

"They would have grown some vegetables in little plots, using their washing
water to feed them," van der Veen said, noting that the fish and oysters
would have been carried overland from the Red Sea which was two days away.

She said there was documentary evidence that the skilled workers were paid
double the monthly salary of their more menial counterparts and, in the
case of the quarrymen, an allowance in food and wine as well.

At peak times, the quarries may have had up to 1,000 people living and
working in and around them, extracting and working the stone ready for
transportation to the Nile for shipment to Rome and beyond.

Just one day's journey away from the quarry on the journey back to the Nile
with their loads of shaped stone was a camp she described as like a modern
roadside diner.

Here the tired drivers and exhausted draught animals would pause to refresh
themselves at the end of a tiring day.
Such roadside refreshment centers were repeated at one-day travel intervals
back to the river, van der Veen said.