transportation expert ross hassig.it was closer is terms of the cost of transportation to get to egypt than it was to get a hundred miles inland in italy. you couldn't bring food from a hundred miles inland to rome, because even with carts, even with oxen, it simply cost too much. so rome was able to tap into the production of other areas because it was able to use ships where the cost of transportation was extremely low. keach: but roman seagoing merchant ships carrying upwards of a thousand tons were too large to navigate the tiber river, so cargos were unloaded onto smaller vessels downriver at the port city of ostia. ostia was once a bustling commercial city, with shops and restaurants... villas and apartment houses for merchants and shippers... theaters, parks and enormous warehouses crammed with every possible commodity. archaeologist amanda claridge. it's clear that the merchants, the many, many thousands of people involved in the supply of the city of rome who did base themselves in ostia -- all the transient s