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NOTES ON THE

examples (for instance, tlie 6000 sestertii which Pliny tells us were paid in thetime of Nero for two small vases,*) and also by the interest several emperors tookin the products of the manufacture, among whom we may specially notice Tacitus,a man of letters and a collector, of whom Yopiscus tells us that “vitreorumoperositate atque diversitate vehementer est delectatus.” f The Portland vase inthe British Museum and the vase in the Museo Borbonico at Naples, to mentionone kind of glass manufacture alone, shew us how well deserved was the admirationwhich was bestowed upon such objects by the dilettanti of Rome.

These and similar vessels, sculptured like cameos, are perhaps the mostbeautiful objects which the glass-makers of those times produced, hut many vesselsof plain glass, or of glass of only one colour, show the greatest elegance of form,as No. 211, represented by Fig. 50; and the ingenuity and invention which devisedso many modes of ornamentation and so many shades of colour, and the skillwith which the manual execution is carried out, alike deserve great admiration,and may be estimated by referring to Plates III. and IV. This prodigious varietyseems to show that glass-making was at that time carried on, not as now in largeestablishments, which produce great quantities of articles identical in form andpattern, but by many artificers, each working on a small scale. This circumstanceenables us to understand why very pure and crystalline glass was, as Pliny tellsus, more valued than any other kind. To produce glass very pure and free fromstrias and bubbles, long continued fusion in large vessels is required; this thesystem of working of the ancients did not allow, and their glass is in consequenceremarkable for the great abundance of bubbles and defects which it contains.

Glass was used at Rome in prodigious quantities; even now, after the lapse ofsome 1,300 or 1,400 years, the abundance of fragments of coloured glass (to saynothing of uncoloured) which are found in and round the city is surprising; thewriter, during about four months of a residence in Rome in the winter of 1858-1859,saw in the hands of the dealers in antiquities fragments of at least 1,000 to 1,200vessels of coloured and ornamented glass, for the most part, the crop, so to speak,of that season. Among these were fragments of at least ten or twelve vessels withAvliite figures in relief on a blue ground, of the same kind as the Portland vase,and in this collection are specimens of a like character.

It is not, however, surprising' that coloured and ornamental glass should havebeen very largely used among the Romans for all those domestic purposes in whicha decorative effect is desired, such as table services, vessels for toilet use, and thelike, when it is remembered that porcelain was not then invented and that Samianware was the most decorative kind of pottery which was at their command. Thebrilliancy of glass as regards both surface and colour, made it attractive, and fashioncaused it to be preferred even to the precious metals, J excepting indeed by the

* Neronis principatu reperta vitri arte, quae moclicos calices duos, quos appellabant pterotos, hs.sex millibus venderet. Plin. Nat. Hist., Lib. xxxyi. cap. 26.

f Yopiscus, in vita Taciti.

| Usus vero ad potandum argenti metalla et auri pepulit. Plin. Nat. Hist., Lib. xxxvi. c. 26, § 67.