apes, and, above all, little vases decorated with chevron bands; all these things belong rather to what in a general way may be classed as jewellery, objects of personal decoration. Of t

; for by the first century of our era, glass had already taken a pos

ine in the first place. From this time onward this is the predominant service to which the material has been put,

we should be in possession of no evidence, documentary or material, that would throw light on this, for us, most important of all questions: Where was it, and at what time, that the great discovery was made-the art of blowing glass? For it

of superlative merit; the record of its provenance has generally been lost: in continental museums it has either found a back place on the shelves of the Greek and Roman collections, or it has been handed over en masse to othe

ic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. 32). It was not the Egyptians themselves that favoure

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should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the introduction of the new system of

cessary to explain that he uses the word ?αλο? in the same sense. In the treasure-lists of temples, of the early part of the fourth century, where the same word is used, the reference is app

th blue or with a honey-like tint resembling that of the hyacinth or the sard. These bowls are distinguished by the purity of their outline; they have apparently been finished on a lathe, but whether the glass was originally simply cast, or, as is possible, blown into a mould, it is impossible to say. The only ornament consists in

ir shapes, they reflect the art of an earlier period. A bowl of pure white glass-the sharp outlines, especially of the solid handles, show that it was finished by a cutting tool-is of a form (the σκ?φο? of the Greeks) well known both in pottery and metal ware. The two graceful bowls, decorated in gold with an exquisite design of acanthus leaves, combined with a small plant with tendrils, both radiating from a central flower, even in their present condition, perhaps surpass in beauty any other known example of ancient glass. From the technical side, the marvellous skill with which the two shells of glass of which these bowls are built

tioned, are identical with the bowls, now in the Assyrian Department, brought back by Layard from Nineveh. In addition to these varied types of glass there were found in the same tombs some large dishes of millefiori ware, and finally a large flat bowl o

eum may be seen outlined in black, apparently between two layers of glass, a little cupid bearing a bunch of grapes. Although many of these l

old French word-was blown into a more or less hemispherical mould, and the irregularities of the resulting bowl were then removed by grinding on a wheel. At any rate, during what we may call the Ale

t a somewhat later date, in the second century B.C., cameos in high relief cast in glass pastes of various colours came into vogue. The 'mother' design was modelled in clay, and upon this matrix the mould in which the glass was to be cast was formed. These early glass cameos are compared by the late Dr. Murray to the circular, moulded reliefs on the black pottery of this perio

Roma

ia or at one or more of the cities of the Ph?nician coast-had been completely Hellenised. Again, the new material found its way in through towns which, if not Greek speaking, were thoroughly Greek in culture, through Cum?-in the neighbourhood of this city glass was probably first made in Italy-and through the semi-Greek towns of Apulia. But in one important respect this Greek glass differed from the contemporary bronze and pottery. It was to the Greeks a new art with few old traditions, and these not of Hellenic origin. In the first century before Christ the industry was only beginning to be of any importance. It thu

Syria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, to Spain and Britain on the other. It has even been found in the tombs of tribes that the Romans never subdued, as in Denmark and Sweden. There is sca

fiori

es. Some of these divisions are perhaps rather arbitrary, and very little success has attended any attempt made by him or by other

Southern Italy-which forms in some degree a transition from our primitive family to the true blown glass of imperial times. This is the so-called Millefiori Glass. We have,

ritish Museum; here we have rosettes of yellow, green, and red upon an opaque ground of a rich blue. The second type is equally characteristic, but more difficult to describe. Short, loosely rolled scrolls of an opaque white float in a more or less transparent base, interspersed with a few quadrangular masses of gilt glass. It would be difficult to say what natural substance is imitat

a combination of minute rods, as in the case of the Egyptian 'fused mosaics.' These pieces were arranged in the mould in a coil, starting from the centre, but how far, if at all, during the subsequ

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the general effect of an agate breccia, as in a fine bowl at South Kensington. When the contorted bands are continuous we have another important type, founded apparently upon the endless varieties of banded agate and other native stones that have been formed by slow deposition in the hollows of rocks. One variety imitates amethystine quartz, but here, as elsewhere, rich combinations of colour, which can have no prototype among natural stones, are often introduced. We have an exceptional

eries of bowls from Greek and Etruscan tombs. There is a choice collection of fragments of millefiori

or perhaps pressed into the surface when hot. In one case we have a process that reminds us of mosaic work; in the other there is some approach to a champlevé enamel, only with a base of glass instead of metal. In some rare ex

of Rom

nt red. The ruby red derived from copper or from gold was known to the early medi?val alchemists, but no undoubted instance of the use of this valuable colour has been observed in glass of the classical period.[27] The nearest approach to a transparent red is to be found in the honey and brown-red tints resembling the sard and the hyacinth; colours such as these are derived chiefly from iron, and may pass, on the one hand, into a pale y

oration

of glass and of glazed pottery, a plan often adopted by the Egyptians. This style was imitated with the little plaques of glass inlay, of which so many fragments have been found among the vineyards in the neighbourhood of Rome.[30] On the other hand, slabs of glass were used to imitate the veneer of porphyry and other marbles, so much in use in Rome in the first and second centuries. The two favourite stones, the red Egyptian porphyry with white spots and the green Serpentino from t

e Villa of Lucius Verus; there are many fine pieces from this source in our museums. In private houses this veneering of glass was above all

which covered the walls of the basilica erected at Rome by Junius Bassus, consul in the year 317. Although this building no longer exists, important remains of the opus sectile which once covered its walls are preserved in a private palace at Rome, and some smaller compartments may be seen in the Church of St. Antonio Abbate on the Esquiline. These have been described in a paper read by the late Mr. Nesbitt before the Society of Antiquaries (Arch?ologia, vol. xlv.; see especially the coloured plate XVIII.). The main subjects, indeed, and the ground are executed chiefly in coloured marbles, but for us the most interesting part

e regarded as a primitive form of what the French call verre coulé, a term which includes our modern plate-glass. The thick heavy glass that the Romans used for their slit-like windows belongs t

of practical importance. Some little circular mirrors of convex glass, about an inch and a half in diameter, have lately been found in Greek or Greco-Roman tombs at Arsinoe in Egypt. There is one in the Musée Guimet at Paris, set in a silver frame with a ring as if for suspension from a necklac

ded

t in precious stones, or again small articles of verroterie in no way differing from those produced by the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean from an early period. Most of the work executed in this way in Roman times has lit

known to the Romans (see p. 27). In one example at least we can see that the coloured paste only formed a coating upon a base of ordinary glass, and this would point to the former being a material of some value. The large plaque of this blue paste, inscribed Bono Eventui, seems to have been finished with t

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he case of glass it is practically impossible to use a mould in the shaping of a hollow vessel without some such method of forcing the viscid material into its place by pressure from the inside. I think, therefore, that it is not unlike

e, at least, the little flasks, unguentaria or what not, blown into moulds, had completely displaced the primitive chevron bottles that had so long been in favour. These moulded flasks are shaped in imitation of various fruits-dates,

ch would point to its containing a certain amount of lead and perhaps of tin. Here, for the first time in the history of glass, we come across the name of the manufacturer-we can hardly say the artist. It is, indeed, as might be expected, to the moulded ware that we are indebted for the most important of the scanty inscriptions that have been found on Roman glass; of these I shall have something to say on a future page. Such inscriptions in relief are above all prominent on the only other type of moulded glass which I can find space to mention. I refer to the cylindrical cups of thin greenish glass, which were apparently given as prizes for victory in various contests, or which perhaps me

erit. The material does not lend itself well to elaborate designs, and one misses the crisp outlines given to glass by the cutting-tool. There is generally an air a