The Quarries of Mount Taygetos in the Peloponnesos, Greece

Abstract

Labels which accompany Greek and Roman works of marble, the world over, quite often venture or even declare, a source for the stone. Parian, Pentalic, Proconnesian, Naxian, Thasian, Carrara, pretty much represent the full range of options to the curator. Never have I seen the name Tainaron appear either in a museum caption or in a catalogue entry for a corpus of ancient sculpture. Yet, the Tainaron quarries and those of Mount Taygetos were famous enough in antiquity to deserve explicit mention by Greek and Roman writers. Though travellers through the Peloponessos, especially those of the nineteenth century, have reported an outcrop variegated marble, less frequently has the same traveller actually sighted an ancient quarry. In 1981 I went to Tainaron in quest of the source for the white marbles used in the temple of Apollo at Bassai. In those reconnaissances of Cape Tainaron, a goodly number of additional quarries were discovered. This paper gives locations and descriptions to the outcrops of marbles and quarries, and outlines a long history of their exploitation.