later ages,' and with the same materials they fashioned artificial pomegranates and other ornaments, together with small portable images of animals, men, and gods, which, like our figures of plaster of Paris, were sold, as well as those of clay, about the streets. Some notion, too, may be formed of the price, since we find that a figure of Eros fetched a drachma.2

3

The manufacture of glass was carried to a very high degree of perfection among the ancients. They understood the methods of blowing, cutting, and engraving on it; could stain it of every rich and brilliant colour so as to imitate the most precious gems, from the ruby and the amethyst to the turquoise and the beryl; they could fashion it into jars, and bowls, and vases, exhibiting all the various hues of the peacock's train, which, like shot-silks and the breast of the dove, exhibited fresh tints in every different light,-fading, quivering, and melting into each other as the eye changed its point of view.

"lassontes versicolores transmisi,

quos mihi sacerdos templi ob"tulit, tibi et sorori meæ specia"liter dedicatos, quos tu velim "festis diebus conviviis adhibeas." Vopisc. in Vit. Saturnin. cap. viii. Casaubon, in his note on this passage, speaks of these cups in the following terms: Allassontes qui colorem mutant sicut palumborum colla. The murrhine vases, the nature of which so many have attempted to explain, if they were not after all a species of glass, appear at least to have had many analogous qualities; and the following description of Pliny is calculated to create the highest idea of their beauty: "Splendor his sine viri"bus: nitorque verius quam "splendor. Sed in pretio varie"tas colorum subinde circumagentibus se maculis in purpuram candoremque, et tertium

66

Squares of glass were produced, perfectly polished and transparent without, but containing figures of various colours in their interior.1 Glass, likewise, was wrought into bassi and alti rilievi, and cast, as gems were cut, into cameos. The manufacturers of Alexandria excelled in the working of glass, with which they skilfully imitated all kinds of earthenware, fabricating cups of every known form.

4

It is added, moreover, that a certain kind of earth was found in Egypt, without which the best kind of coloured glass could not be produced. Petronius informs us, that, in the reign of Tiberius, a skilful experimentalist discovered the art of rendering this substance malleable, but that the emperor, from some freak of tyranny, put the man to death, and thus his secret was lost to the world. A similar act of cruelty was perpetrated by the public authorities at Dantzic, who, in the seventeenth century, caused an able mechanician, who had invented a superior kind of ribbon-loom, to be strangled."

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CHAPTER VI.

INDUSTRY: OIL AND COLOUR MEN.-ITALIAN WAREHOUSES. -DRUGGISTS. -COLLECTORS OF SIMPLES.

2

THERE was, moreover, produced in Greece, a number of articles, whether of use or luxury, to the venders of which it appears difficult to appropriate a name. It must necessarily be inferred, however, that there existed a class of shopkeepers analogous to our oil and colour men, at whose establishments were found most or all of the following commodities: every kind of vegetable oil, for cookery, painting, or to be burned as lamp-oil, of sea salt, probably for medicinal purposes, oil of horseradish, used instead of the root itself, as a condiment. Among the lamp-oils it is worthy of observation that the Greeks included castor oil3 which was commonly, from its nauseous effects, eschewed as a medicine. Bitumen also was occasionally burnt in lamps. Their lampwicks were ordinarily of rushes," which they sometimes anointed with the oil expressed from the seeds of the myagrum perenne; and from certain nuts found on the oak they obtained a sort of woolly substance' which, being twisted into wicks, burnt freely without oil. The dried stem of the torch-weed was likewise emTheir flambeaux consisted pine or pitch tree, or even

ployed for this purpose. originally of slips of the 1 Aristoph. Problem. xxiii. 15. 'Papavéλaiov. Dioscor. i. 45. 3 Κίκινον ἔλαιον.Κικι, οἱ δὲ σήσαμον ἄγριον, οἱ δὲ, σέσελι Kúpov. Dioscor. iv. 164.

4 Dioscor. i. 99. Cf. Herod. 179. 5 Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 60. Athen. x. 25.

6 Dioscor. iv. 117.

3

7 Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 4. Plin. xviii. 10.

8 Poll. i. 229, seq.

9 The same torch is still in use in Circassia. J. S. Bell, Journal of a residence in Circassia, ii. 69.

as at Rhodes of the bark of the vine, but afterwards certain combustible compositions were burned in painted and ornamented handles.

The making of pitch, generally found in these shops, was carried on in the following manner,3 particularly among the Macedonians: Having cleared a large level space in the forests, as when constructing a threshing-floor, they carefully paved it, and gave the whole a slope towards the centre. The billets of wood were then piled up endways as close to each other as possible, and so as that the height of the heap should always be in proportion to its magnitude. These piles were frequently of enormous dimensions, falling little short of a hundred yards in circumference and rising to the height of eighty or ninety feet. The whole mound was then covered with turf and earth; and the wood having been set on fire by means of an open passage below, which immediately afterwards was closed, numerous ladders were thrown up along its sides in order that, should the least smoke anywhere appear, fresh layers of turf and earth might be cast upon it: for if the flame found a vent the hopes of the manufacturer were destroyed. The pitch flowed off by an underground channel leading from the centre of the area to a spacious cistern sunk in the earth about twenty feet beyond the circumference of the mound, where it was suffered to cool. During two days and two nights the fire in these heaps continued generally to burn, requiring the incessant care and vigilance of the workmen, though it frequently happened that before sunset on the second day, the earthy crust flattened and fell in, the wood being reduced to ashes. This was generally preceded by the pitch ceasing to flow. The whole of this period was converted into a holiday by the labourers,

1 Athen. xvi. 61. Cf. Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 48. t. i. p. 343.

2 Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 1373. Bottiger. Fur. pl. 2. Barthelemy, Anarcharsis, ii. 330. Goguet. iii.

391. Cf. Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 63. Zoëga, Bassi Rilievi, tav. 14.

3 Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 3. i. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 189.

643.

who offered sacrifice to the gods, and preferred many prayers, that their pitch might be plentiful and good.

Nitre was procured from wood-ashes,' as it is at this day in Circassia, from the ashes of a plant cultivated for the purpose. It has been supposed that the ancients were acquainted with gunpowder; and there appears to have been a dim tradition of artificial thunder and lightning among the Brachmanes in the remotest antiquity.3

6

The demand for the various earths and colours was considerable; such as the Melian, a fine white marl, used by artists frequently for communicating to green paint a pale hue; the Cimolian, by fullers;5 and the gypsum, employed occasionally by both. The Samian, being fat and unctuous, was eschewed by painters, though it found its place among the materia medica. Another article in much request was the argol, a beautiful moss,' used both by painters and dyers; to which we may add the cinnabar and the kermes, used for dying scarlet; the Indian black, indigo, ultramarine, lamp and ivory black, painter's soot, collected from glass furnaces,10 verdigris, ceruse, and minium, used in painting vases and clay statues.11 Other substances which sometimes entered into the materials of painters were, the sandarach and the orpiment, found in gold, silver, and

12