PRESTON ROMAN PAVEMENT. 2OJ 



to the same period. Those persons who think that man began 

 to adorn a variety of objects from an inbred tendency to 

 embellish things, will be inclined to go no farther. It will 

 suffice for them to say " Lo ! here is a decorated floor." 

 Others, who believe that the love of ornament has been of slow 

 growth, that it originated, on the one hand, from a close 

 attention to the forms of artifice and structure, and, on the other, 

 from efforts to fashion magical charms and devices, will see at 

 Preston what I have attempted to decipher on the Dorchester 

 mosaic. 



The cordage motif, that plays its part here, we may recognise 

 also on early British vases, on Assyrian cylinders, and on the 

 propylons of ancient Egypt. It sprang from that expectancy of 

 completeness that was associated with fabrics of twisted fibre, of 

 basketry, and wattlework. And we witness, too, the mystical 

 mark, the auspicious token, which claimed alliance with the 

 divine life and power that shone forth from Heaven and that all 

 men knew and venerated. Sometimes this affinity was denoted 

 openly by a radiant solar circle, and sometimes it was indicated 

 by cryptic signs like those which were furnished by the Lily of 

 the Nile, the emblem of the sun. The Egyptians were, 

 naturally, the first people to develop their favourite motif into a 

 scroll, to insert into the opening spirals a lotus flower, and to 

 adorn the ceilings of their tombs with this fitting symbolism. 

 A thousand years afterwards, in B.C. 700, the Phoenicians had 

 carried the design across the Mediterranean, where it decorated 

 Melian vases. Ultimately it was adopted by the Greeks, who 

 handed on to Rome the lotus-frieze we now possess. In the 

 pavement before us, a parallelogram is bordered by a cable 

 pattern. From side to side, at the two ends of the oblong, runs 

 a lotiform scroll. By this treatment the oblong is resolved into 

 a square. This, broken up into an octagon, encloses another, 

 the predominant square, which contains the ruling device of the 

 entire scheme. All the ornamental fields are separated by the 

 binding motif, the same cable pattern. Outside the octagon, 

 the corners are filled with triangles ; between the octagon and 



