SIGHT AND SEEING IN ANCIENT TIMES 425 



proper training as a person who never saw a dozen houses together. It 

 is well known, too, that what are sometimes called the lower senses, 

 touch, taste and smell, are often of extraordinary acuteness in civilized 

 man as the result of training. If, therefore, any of the senses of our 

 urban population is feebler than that of the dwellers in the rural dis- 

 tricts, it is not due to an inherent weakness, but to improper or in- 

 judicious use. 



Since it is evident that the ancients, particularly the Greeks, looked 

 upon the external world with emotions very different from the moderns, 

 let us next inquire what means they possessed, if any, for strengthening 

 the sight or aiding defective vision. The problem has been a good 

 deal discussed. Those who believe that some sort of apparatus cor- 

 responding to modern eye-glasses has been in use from almost time 

 immemorial rely chiefly upon inference, since hardly any direct evi- 

 dence is forthcoming. It is held by some investigators that the very 

 large number of seal rings and seal cylinders, both intaglios and 

 cameos, dating from the remotest times found in the Babylonian tombs, 

 must be accepted as proof positive that the art of cutting the hardest 

 precious and other stones was a regular business in that part of the 

 world, and that this could not have been carried on without some kind 

 of magnifying lenses. That work of this sort could be performed only 

 by persons of exceptionally keen eyesight is beyond question : the infer- 

 ence drawn from modern experience is logical. Yet in the absence of 

 objects which might reasonably be expected to be forthcoming, we are 

 constrained to render the verdict ' not proven.' So far as we have 

 direct testimony, it is all adverse, if the expression be admissible. It 

 is generally held that the first mention of magnifying glasses is found 

 in an Arab writer of the eleventh century. Eoger Bacon speaks of 

 glasses that correct refraction. The epitaph of a certain Salvinus 

 Armatus in Florence names him as the inventor of spectacles, although 

 it is also said of the monk Alexander of Spina, that he made use of 

 eyeglasses. In the year 1488 makers of spectacles are mentioned in 

 Nuremberg. There is a passage in Scott's ' Quentin Durward ' that 

 represents Lord Crawford with spectacles on his nose, and the remark 

 is added that the invention was recent. That artificial aids to sight 

 are modern is also rendered probable from the lack of a word inherited 

 from antiquity to designate the apparatus. The English word ' spec- 

 tacle ' is still used in a sense that differs but little from its Latin parent : 

 it is something to look at, a stage-play, then the theater itself. But 

 the earliest English ' spectacle ' is used for spy-glass. It is thence 

 probable that our plural ' spectacles ' originally meant a pair of spy- 

 glasses, a sort of anticipated binocular. The French spectacle still 

 has its original Latin meaning, the form of the word being but slightly 

 changed. On the other hand, in the German and Scandinavian 

 languages, Spehtahel is equivalent to what we call a ' rumpus.' But 



