128 Beginnings of Porcelain 



directly imported from the Orient, together with the ware. This 

 assumption is a necessary postulate in the case; and it is evident also 

 that Pliny was ignorant of the real nature of the murrines, for he neg- 

 lects to state what their actual character was. He fails to give a plain 

 and matter-of-fact definition of the material, or to classify it in any 

 known category of objects. True it is, he placed his article in his book 

 on stones; but this only justifies us in concluding that Pliny regarded 

 the murrine vases as possibly of stone, but not that they really were 

 of stone. The opponents of the pottery theory forget that pottery 

 is composed also of mineral substances, that we ourselves speak of 

 stoneware, and that many a piece of stoneware is so hard that it is 

 difficult enough to distinguish it from stone. Pliny must have been 

 in the same quandary, and therefore did not commit himself to a frank 

 utterance. This attitude of restraint is conclusive, and at the outset 

 is conducive to two inferences. The substance murra was neither a 

 mineral nor pure glass, for both were perfectly familiar to Pliny and 

 his contemporaries. Why, if the murra plainly was of a mineral nature, 

 should the learned and experienced naturalist not have unequivocally 

 avowed this fact? The murra can have been but a most striking and 

 novel material, which heretofore had been foreign to the Romans, and 

 which, owing to the very novelty of its character, greatly puzzled them. 

 Pliny discusses in this chapter the murrine vessels, as they were 

 sent to Rome from the Orient, in the shape of manufactured articles. 

 In the preceding chapter he dilates on their first introduction and 

 their excessive valuation, and tells of renowned individual cups. Natu- 

 rally he is now bound to say what these sensational and luxurious 

 objects looked like. He certainly does not intend to describe here the 

 substance murra, alleged by some interpreters to have been a species 

 of stone. The same interpreters, however, are agreed that in Chapter 7 

 the word myrrhina (eadem victoria primum in urbem myrrhina invexit) 

 refers to murrine vessels, and not to the mineral of which they are 

 alleged to have been made; and it is therefore obvious, also, that in 

 the beginning of Chapter 8 the same word, myrrhina, must refer to 

 exactly the same murrine vessels. Pliny means to convey the mean- 

 ing that the murrine vessels came to Rome from the East. According 

 to Thiersch, it was not the vessels, but the mineral, which was im- 

 ported; but unfortunately he fails to inform us where and how the 

 mineral was wrought. Pliny does not say that the vessels were carved 

 in Rome from an imported substance, but he does plainly state that 

 they were first brought to the metropolis by Pompey. Thiersch 1 



1 L. c, p. 471. 



