Museum of Antiquity Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: STANDING LAMP.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT LAMPS.]

The date of oil-lamps in Greece can not be stated with accuracy; they were known at the time of Aristophanes. They were made of terra-cotta or metal, and their construction resembles those used by the Romans.

They are mostly closed semi-globes with two openings, one, in the centre, to pour the oil in, the other in the nose-shaped prolongation destined to receive the wick. Amongst the small numbers of Greek lamps preserved to us we have chosen a few of the most graceful specimens, one of them showing the ordinary form of the lamp. Some are made of clay, the latter being painted in various colors. The Athenians also used lanterns made of transparent horn, and lit up with oil-lamps.

They were carried at night in the streets like the torches. Sparks, carefully preserved under the ashes, served both Greeks and Romans to light the fire. The ancients had, however, a lighting apparatus consisting of two pieces of wood, of which the one was driven into the other, like a gimlet, the friction effecting a flame. According to Theophrast, the wood of nut or chestnut trees was generally used for the purpose.

The street running from the Temple of Fortune to the Forum, called the Street of the Forum, in Pompeii, and forming a continuation of that of Mercury, has furnished an unusually rich harvest of various utensils.

A long list of these is given by Sir W. Gell, according to which there were found no less than two hundred and fifty small bottles of inferior gla.s.s, with numerous other articles of the same material, which it would be tedious to particularize.

A marble statue of a laughing faun, two bronze figures of Mercury, the one three inches and the other four inches high, and a statue of a female nine inches high, were also found, together with many bronze lamps and stands. We may add vases, basins with handles, paterae, bells, elastic springs, hinges, buckles for harness, a lock, an inkstand, and a strigil; gold ear-rings and a silver spoon; an oval cauldron, a saucepan, a mould for pastry, and a weight of alabaster used in spinning, with its ivory axis remaining. The catalogue finishes with a leaden weight, forty-nine lamps of common clay ornamented with masks and animals, forty-five lamps for two wicks, three boxes with a slit to keep money in, in one of which were found thirteen coins of t.i.tus, Vespasian, and Domitian. Among the most curious things discovered, were seven glazed plates found packed in straw. There were also seventeen unvarnished vases of terra-cotta and seven clay dishes, and a large pestle and mortar. The scales and steelyard which we have given are said to have been found at the same time. On the beam of the steelyard are Roman numerals from X. to x.x.xX.; a V was placed for division between each X.; smaller divisions are also marked. The inscription is

IMP. VESP. AVG. IIX.

T. IMP. AVG. F. VI. C.

EXACTA. IN. CAPITO.

which is translated thus: "In the eighth consulate of Vespasian Emperor Augustus, and in the sixth of t.i.tus, Emperor and son of Augustus. Proved in the Capitol." This shows the great care taken to enforce a strict uniformity in the weights and measures used throughout the empire; the date corresponds with the year 77 of our era, only two years previous to the great eruption. The steelyard found was also furnished with chains and hooks, and with numbers up to x.x.x. Another pair of scales had two cups, with a weight on the side opposite to the material weighed, to mark more accurately the fractional weight; this weight was called by the ancients ligula, and examen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCALES AND WEIGHTS.]

Gell tells us that the skeleton of a Pompeian was found here, "who apparently, for the sake of sixty coins, a small plate and a saucepan of silver, had remained in his house till the street was already half filled with volcanic matter." He was found as if in the act of escaping from his window. Two others were found in the same street.

The shops in the street on the north side of the Temple of Augustus most probably supplied those who feasted with dainties; and it has been called the Street of Dried Fruits, from the quant.i.ty of raisins, figs, plums, and chestnuts, fruit of several sorts preserved in vases of gla.s.s, hempseed, and lentils. It is now, however, more generally known as the Street of the Augustals. Scales, money, moulds for pastry and bread, were discovered in the shops; and a bronze statue of Fame, small, and delicately executed, having golden bracelets round the arms.

In the northern entrance to the building the name CELSVM was written on a pilaster; near it was found in a box a gold ring with an engraved stone set in it, forty-one silver, and a thousand and thirty-six bra.s.s coins.

The next group of vessels, though nearly dest.i.tute of ornament, and probably of a very ordinary cla.s.s, will serve to give us some idea of the cooking vessels of the Romans. One of the most celebrated vases in the Neapolitan collection was found with a bronze simpulum in it; and upon the vase itself there was a sacrificial painting, representing a priest in the act of pouring out a libation from a vase with the simpulum.

Pottery in ancient times was usually much more ornamental than at present, although it was often the case that their ornaments were rather an inconvenience, and would simply enc.u.mber the vessels; in our practical age more importance is placed in the convenience and utility than in beauty. Even their common vessels are not without a certain degree of elegance, both in form and workmanship.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VESSELS. (_From Pompeii._)]

Great numbers of clay vases have been found, of which the following is a very beautiful specimen. The lip and base have the favorite ovolo moulding; the body has two rows of fluting separated by a transverse band, charged with leaves, and with a swan in the centre. The neck of the vase is painted, and the same subject is given on each side. It represents a chariot, drawn by four animals at full gallop, which appear to be intermediate between tigers and panthers. A winged genius directs them with his left hand, while with his right he goads them with a javelin.

Another winged figure preceding the quadriga, with a thyrsus in his left hand, is in the act of seizing the bridle of one of the animals.

The whole is painted in white on a black ground, except some few of the details, which are yellow, and the car and mantle of the genius, which are red. The handles represent knotted cords, or flexible branches interlaced, which terminate in the heads of animals. This vase is much cracked, probably in consequence of the violence of the fire.

Some drinking vessels of peculiar construction have been found, which merit a particular description. These were in the shape of a horn, the primitive drinking-vessel, and had commonly a hole at the point, to be closed with the finger, until the drinker, raising it above his mouth, suffered the liquor to flow in a stream from the orifice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRINKING VESSEL.]

This method of drinking, which is still practiced in some parts of the Mediterranean, must require great skill in order to hit the mark exactly. Sometimes the hole at the tip was closed, and one or two handles fitted to the side, and then the base formed the mouth; and sometimes the whimsical fancy of the potter fashioned it into the head of a pig, a stag, or any other animal. One in the Neapolitan Museum has the head of an eagle with the ears of a man.

These vases are usually of clay, but cheap as is the material, it is evident by their good workmanship that they were not made by the lowest artists.

The learned seem to have been generally mistaken on the subject of gla.s.s-making among the ancients, who appear to have been far more skillful than had been imagined. The vast collection of bottles, vases, gla.s.ses, and other utensils, discovered at Pompeii, is sufficient to show that the ancients were well acquainted with the art of gla.s.s-blowing.

There is no doubt but that the Romans possessed gla.s.s in sufficient plenty to apply it to purposes of household ornament. The raw material appears from Pliny's account to have undergone two fusions; the first converted it into a rough ma.s.s called ammonitrum, which was melted again and became pure gla.s.s. We are also told of a dark-colored gla.s.s resembling obsidian, plentiful enough to be cast into solid statues.

Pliny mentions having seen images of Augustus cast in this substance.

It probably was some coa.r.s.e kind of gla.s.s resembling the ammonitrum, or such as that in which the scoriae of our iron furnaces abound. Gla.s.s was worked either by blowing it with a pipe, as is now practiced, by turning in a lathe, by engraving and carving it, or, as we have noticed, by casting it in a mould.

The ancients had certainly acquired great skill in the manufacture, as appears both from the accounts which have been preserved by ancient authors, and by the specimens which still exist--among which we may notice, as pre-eminently beautiful, that torment of antiquaries, the Portland vase, preserved in the British Museum. We have already adverted to another vase of the same kind, and of almost equal beauty, found in one of the tombs near the Gate of Herculaneum.

A remarkable story is told by Dion Ca.s.sius, of a man who, in the time of the Emperor Tiberius, brought a gla.s.s cup into the imperial presence and dashed it on the ground. To the wonder of the spectators, the vessel bent under the blow without breaking, and the ingenious artist immediately hammered out the bruise, and restored it whole and sound to its original form; in return for which display of his skill, Tiberius, it is said, ordered him to be immediately put to death.

The story is a strange one, yet it is confirmed by Pliny, who both mentions the discovery itself, and gives a clue to the motives which may have urged the emperor to a cruelty apparently so unprovoked. He speaks of an artificer who had invented a method of making flexible gla.s.s, and adds that Tiberius banished him, lest this new fashion should injure the workers in metal, of whose trade the manufacture of gold, silver, and other drinking-cups, and furniture for the table, formed an extensive and important branch.

The Romans were also well acquainted with the art of coloring gla.s.s, as appears, among other proofs, from the gla.s.s mosaics, of which mention has been made. Pliny speaks of a blood-red sort, called haematinum, from blood, of white gla.s.s, blue gla.s.s, etc. The most valuable sort, however, was the colorless crystal gla.s.s, for two cups of which, with handles on each side, Nero gave 6,000 sesterces, about $240.

Under this head we may speak of the vases called _murrhina_, since one theory respecting them is, that they were made of variegated gla.s.s.

Their nature, however, is doubtful; not so their value. Pliny speaks of 70 talents being given for one holding three s.e.xtarii, about four and a half pints. t.i.tus Petronius on his death-bed defrauded the avarice of Nero, who had compelled him, by a common piece of tyranny, to appoint the crown his heir by breaking a murrhine trulla, or flat bowl, worth 300 talents. Nero himself, as became a prince, outdid all by giving 100 talents for a single capis, or drinking-cup, "a memorable circ.u.mstance, that an emperor, and father of his country, should have drunk at so dear a rate." Pliny's description of this substance runs thus:

"It is to be noticed that we have these rich ca.s.sidoin vessels (called in Latin murrhina) from the East, and that from places otherwise not greatly renowned, but most within the kingdom of Parthia; howbeit the princ.i.p.al come from Carmania. The stone whereof these vessels are made is thought to be a certain humor, thickened as it were in the earth by heat. In no place are these stones found larger than small tablements of pillars or the like, and seldom were they so thick as to serve for such a drinking-cup as I have spoken of already. Resplendent are they in some sort, but it may rather be termed a gloss than a radiant and transparent clearness; but that which maketh them so much esteemed is the variety of colors, for in these stones a man shall perceive certain veins or spots, which, as they be turned about, resemble divers colors, inclining partly to purple and partly to white: he shall see them also of a third color composed of them both, resembling the flame of fire. Thus they pa.s.s from one to another as a man holdeth them, insomuch as their purple seemeth near akin to white, and their milky white to bear as much on the purple. Some esteem those ca.s.sidoin or murrhine stones, the richest, which present as it were certain reverberations of certain colors meeting altogether about their edges and extremities, such as we observe in rainbows; others are delighted with certain fatty spots appearing in them; and no account is made of them which show either pale or transparent in any part of them, for these be reckoned great faults and blemishes; in like manner if there be seen in the ca.s.sidoin any spots like corns of salts or warts, for then are they considered apt to split. Finally, the ca.s.sidoin stones are commended in some sort also for the smell that they do yield."

On these words of Pliny a great dispute has arisen. Some think that onyx is the material described, a conjecture founded on the variety of colors which that stone presents. To this it is objected, that onyx and murrha, onyx vases and murrhine vases are alike mentioned by Latin writers, and never with any hint as to their ident.i.ty; nay, there is a pa.s.sage in which Heliogabalus is said to have onyx and murrhine vases in constant use. Others, as we have said, think that they were variegated gla.s.s; others that they were the true Chinese porcelain, a conjecture in some degree strengthened by a line of Propertius:

"Murrheaq. in Parthis pocula cocta focis."

At the same time this quotation is not so conclusive as it might have been, since Pliny speaks of murrha as "hardened in the earth by heat,"

and the poet may only have meant the same thing, though the expression in that case would be somewhat strained. To us, Pliny's description appears to clearly point to some opaline substance; the precious opal has never in modern times been found in ma.s.ses approaching to the size necessary to make vessels such as we have spoken of. The question is not likely to be settled, and it is not improbable that the material of these murrhine vases is entirely unknown to us, as the quarries of many marbles used by the ancients have hitherto eluded our research, and the marbles themselves are only known by their recurrence among ancient buildings.

We may here notice one or two facts connected with gla.s.s, which show that the ancients were on the verge of making one or two very important discoveries in physical science. They were acquainted with the power of transparent spherical bodies to produce heat by the transmission of light, though not with the manner in which that heat was generated by the concentration of the solar rays. Pliny mentions the fact that hollow gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s filled with water would, when held opposite to the sun, grow hot enough to burn any cloth they touched; but the turn of his expression evidently leads to the conclusion that he believed the heat to become acc.u.mulated in the gla.s.s itself, not merely to be transmitted through it. Seneca speaks of similar gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s, which magnified minute objects to the view. Nay, he had nearly stumbled on a more remarkable discovery, the composition of light, for he mentions the possibility of producing an artificial rainbow by the use of an angular gla.s.s rod. At a far earlier period Aristophanes speaks of "a transparent substance used to light fires with," usually translated gla.s.s. The pa.s.sage is curious, as it shows a perfect acquaintance with the use of the burning gla.s.s.

With the laws of reflection the ancients, as we know from the performances ascribed to Archimedes, were well acquainted. It is singular that being in possession of such remarkable facts connected with refraction, they should never have proceeded to investigate the laws by which it is governed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GLa.s.s VESSELS (_of Pompeii_).]

The first object figured _h_, in the annexed block, is a gla.s.s funnel, _infundibulum_; _g_, is described as a wine-strainer, but the method of its use is not altogether clear. The bottom is slightly concave, and pierced with holes. It is supposed to have been used as a sort of tap, the larger part being placed within the barrel, and the wine drawn off through the neck or spout, which is broken. Fig. _n_, is a wine-taster, something on the principle of a siphon. It is hollow, and the air being exhausted by the mouth at the small end, the liquid to be tasted was drawn up into the cavity. _a_ and _b_, wine-jars; _c_, two small wine-jars in a gla.s.s casket; _d_, _e_, _f_ and _q_, goblets or drinking-gla.s.ses of toned and beautiful colored gla.s.s; _i_ and _m_, gla.s.s dishes, the first with a saucer.

Another sort of gla.s.s strainer, of which there are several in the Neapolitan Museum, is made of bronze, pierced in elegant and intricate patterns as seen on page 84. The Romans used strainers filled with snow to cool their wines, and such may have been the destination of the one here represented. These were called _cola vinaria_, or _nivaria_. The poor used a linen cloth for the same purpose.

With respect to the details of dress, the excavations, whether at Pompeii or Herculaneum, enable us to clear up no difficulties, and to add little to that which is already known on this subject. Still a short notice of the princ.i.p.al articles of dress, and explanation of their Latin names, may be expedient for the full understanding of some parts of our subject. The male costume will detain us a very short time.

The proper Roman dress, for it would be tiresome and unprofitable to enter upon the variety of garments introduced in later times from foreign nations, consisted merely of the toga and tunica, the latter being itself an innovation on the simple and hardy habit of ancient times. It was a woolen vest, for it was late before the use of linen was introduced, reaching to the knees, and at first made without sleeves, which were considered effeminate; but, as luxury crept in, not only were sleeves used, but the number of tunics was increased to three or four. The toga was an ample semi-circular garment, also without sleeves. It is described as having an opening large enough to admit the head and the right arm and shoulder, which were left exposed, having a sort of lappet, or flap (lacinia), which was brought under the right arm and thrown over the left shoulder, forming the _sinus_, or bosom, the deep folds of which served as a sort of pocket.

This is the common description, which, we confess, conveys no very clear notion of the construction or appearance of the dress. The left arm was entirely covered, or if exposed, it was by gathering up the lower edge of the ample garment.

The female dress consisted of one or more tunics, with an upper garment, called _stola_, which superseded the toga, originally worn by women as well as men. The stola is said to have been a more ample and ornamented sort of tunic. The tunic worn by women does not seem to have differed from that worn by men, except that it reached to the feet. Above the stola, women wore a mantle called palla or pallium.

This is said to have been thrown across the shoulders, the right end being gathered up and thrown over the left shoulder, leaving nothing but the right hand visible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUPS AND METALS.]

Some minute speculations relative to one article in female dress have been based on a statue from Herculaneum, in which a Neapolitan antiquary thinks that he has discovered the nature and construction of that compound garment called the tunico-pallium, in which the appearance and uses of the tunic and mantle were united. It is the statue of a woman employed in buckling her dress over the right shoulder, having already fastened it on the left, in such a manner as to leave the arm bare.

Numerous articles of female ornament have been found, of which we have collected a few into one block. They are drawn of the same size as the originals. The lower corners of the cut represent ear-rings, seen in front and sideways. It is a portion of a plain gold spheroid, very thick, with a metal hook at the back to pa.s.s through the ear. The next is of simpler construction, having pearl pendants. Both these patterns seem to have been very common. The upper right-hand corner of the cut represents a breast-pin, attached to a Baccha.n.a.lian figure, with a patera in one hand and a gla.s.s in the other. He is provided with bat's wings, and two belts, or bands of grapes, pa.s.s across his body. The bat's wings symbolize the drowsiness consequent upon hard drinking.

There are also represented gold rings with serpent's heads, the eyes of which are inlaid with beautiful stones and diamonds; also bracelets of this pattern were very common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOLD JEWELRY (_From Pompeii_)]