more difficult to assemble. Roman coopers tended to be independent tradesmen, passing their skills on to their sons. The Greek geographer Strabo recorded that wooden ''pithoi'' (barrels or wine-jars) were lined with pitch to stop leakage and preserve the wine.

Barrels were sometimes used for military purposes. Julius Caesar (100 to 44 BC) used catapults to hurl burning barrels of tar into besieged