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POTTERY. 



POTTERY. 



083 





The pottery of Rome was probably imported from Etruria, and the 

 earliest ware was the black Etruscan. Numa, indeed, is said to have 

 founded a guild of potters, B.C. 700, but the oldest known Roman vases 

 are saucers or phiala 1 of red clay, coloured with a leaden black glaze, 

 ornamented with white figures and inscribed in painted white letters 

 Volcani pocolom, Lai'frnai pocolom, the cup of Vulcan, the cup of 

 Laverna, &c. These were probably made in Campania, about B.C. 200, 

 after the conquest of Southern Italy by their arms. The old potteries 

 of Rome are by no means distinguishable from their neighbours, and 

 they probably imported Greek, Etruscan, Campanian, and other wares 

 for all but the commonest and roughest usages of life. Old Rome, 

 before the rebuilding of the city by Augustus, who boasted that he 

 harl found it of brick and left it of stone, was built of brick houses. 

 The Roman brick was made of the same shape and dimensions, and in 

 the same manner as the Greek, and Vitruvius calls them Lydia, penta- 

 dora, and tetradara. The usual dimensions are 15x4 inches superficial, 

 ami '2 inches thick, and they rather resemble tiles than bricks ; but 

 some, in dimensions like the modern bricks, are seen in the Meta Sudans 

 at Rome. The paste of the Roman bricks is of a close, compact, and 

 fine texture, remarkably hard and sonorous when struck, and is of 

 a dark red or straw colour. They often bear traces of the feet of 

 boys in hob-nailed sandals, goats, dogs, and other animals which have 

 walked over them while drying in the kiln, and have inscriptions 

 incised upon them, sometimes alphabets traced by boys, poetic 

 effusions, the dates when prepared, and the purpose for which made. 

 Tilrs, legula, are distinguished from the bricks by their flanged edges, 

 hamatte, and were made by the same process ; theyjwere covered at the 

 joint by a semicircular tile, imbrex, the end imbrex of the series ter- 

 minating over a semi-oval upright, called the antefixum, on which was 

 impressed in bas-relief an architectural ornament or figure of a deity ; 

 the cornices also of terra cotta had gargoiles in sha|)e of the head or 

 forepart of a lion. The paste of the tiles ia similar to that of bricks, 

 but their dimensions diS'er ; they are 1 foot 3J inches in length by 

 1 foot wide, and '1\ inches in height in the flange, and are named 

 according to their sizes bipedales, or two foot; or ioquipedalet, or 

 14 foot tiles; some are slightly convex, and sometimes more convex, 

 and at the Byzantine period, some of the roofs seem to have been 

 gilded. Besides for roofing they were used for the floors of the 

 hypocaust-i, suspemoria, or low storied houses, atteyia, tegulifia, and 

 graves ; flue tiles or pipes, lulti, scored at the sides with a hackle or 

 comb, fixed with a small nail of lead, clarit mutcaria, were used for 

 heating winter apartments or conveying the smoke from the furnaces 

 of the hypocausts ; wall tiles, bipedala, with various ornaments ; 

 cylindrical drain tiles, tubuli, sometimes hemispherical and open, above 

 8 inches diameter. Fragments of bricks and tiles were used for the 

 rudcratio, or understrata of roads, and for the red Umcra of mosaic 

 pavements. The brick and tile makers, teytdi ab imbricibus, trynlarii, 

 stamped on the tiles inscriptions in bas-relief letters. Those on the 

 Roman tiles often are circular medallions with a device, the name of 

 the fabric, upui duliare, or " pot work," the consuls when made, the 

 farms, potteries, ojKcina, fylintr, doliarei offirina. These inscriptions 

 commence about A.D. 100, and end A.D. 222. When the tiles were 

 made by the military, the decurio of the workmen stamped on them 

 the name and titles of the legion, cohort, or other military division by 

 whom they were made, in an abridged form. Other portions of architec- 

 ture, especially friezes with mythical and other subjects in flat bas- 

 relief, atlixed by leaden plugs or nails to the impluvium, and painted 

 in gay colours in tempera, were also made of a terra cotta like the 

 bricks. Much care was bestowed on this branch of the fictile art, and 

 the times specified for their fabric in spring and autumn, and 

 Hostilius Saserna the elder and younger, two writers on agriculture, 

 had, according to Varro, written on the subject of the potteries. 

 Although the Romans imported under the republic statues from 

 Etruria, at a later period they were made in the Roman territories ; the 

 principal statues of this material at Rome were a Felicitas, made by 

 order of Lucullus, and a Venus Genetrix for Julius Caesar; in later 

 times terra cotta statues were gilded. Few figures of large size have been 

 found at Pompeii, Pozzuoli, near the Porta Latina at Rome, and at 

 other places. 



Throughout, however, the Roman empire, small figures of terra cotta 

 called tiijilln or tiyillarla, used for votive or religious purposes, for 

 presents on the festival of Saturnalia, some representing deities, others 

 personage* of common life, or grotesque figures like modern toys, 

 which were also called crepundia, were sometimes made of terra cotta, by 

 particular potters, r nynarii. A pottery for the manufacture 



of these figures with moulds has been lately found at Moulins, and in 

 the valley of Allier ; others of the Gaulish goddess Nehallenia have 

 been found at Autun, Dijon, and a few in England. They are 

 generally of a white or pipe clay, and rarely have a potter's name. 

 Terra cotta was also employed for miscellaneous uses, such as the 

 crucibles and moulds of the false coiner, and great quantities of lamps, 

 lucerna, were made of this material. These were stamped out of 

 moulds, forma:, by potters called lucernarii ; the body is generally of a 

 circular shape, with one or more projecting nozzles, and the handles in 

 shape of Junes, busts of Serapis, antefixal ornaments or plain rings. 

 They are generally only a few inches long, and slightly concave on the 

 upper surface, on which arc stamped, in bas-relief, deities, animals, 

 fables, subjects taken from the poets, the games of the circus, and 



amusements of the streets. At a later period in the empire, the Jews 

 or Christians used as a device the golden candlestick, the monogram of 

 Christ, and other religious devices. These lamps have generally on 

 their base letters stamped in, either the name of the potter, and 

 potteries, or the place and date. The principal lamp-makers lived at 

 the Porta Trigemina, situated at the foot of the Aventine, and towards 

 the Tiber, where Cacus the robber giant had dwelt, close to the Salt 

 Springs or Salt Pans, and on the Vatican. The trade was active, and 

 the lamps appear to have been imported throughout the empire. 

 Besides the normal type, some fancy shapes occur, such as a pair of feet 

 and a gladiator's helmet. Lamps were in great use for household 

 purposes, illuminations, funerals, and votive offerings. Notwithstanding 

 the introduction of metallic vases in the latter days of the Republic, 

 the Romans, especially the poorer classes, made various kinds of 

 earthenware vases for all household and some religious purposes 

 even during the Empire. Large casks, dolia, made of a coarse red, 

 white, or yellow clay, and 7 or S feet high, hooped with lead, were made 

 by particular makers called doliarii, and used as vats for holding wine ; 

 they were made in the same manner as the pithoi, and they gave the 

 name of opus doliare to earthenware. The Roman potters used the 

 wheel and moulds for the production of other vases, and kilns of 

 potters have been discovered in Germany, France, and Britain with 

 vases, remains of materials, and tools. The principal vases are the 

 unglazed yellow used for amphonc, lagoense, bottles, a flat vase with a 

 spout called the mortarium, and many small patera; ; cups and bowls, 

 bottles, cadi, gutti, olloc or jars, cups, calices, mortars, and sometimes 

 amphone were often made of a pale red ware, the paste mixed with 

 a small quartz pebble ; a kind of gray ware made of a sandy loam, 

 resembling stone ware, was used for mortaria and amphora; ; small 

 plates, patellte, cups, pocttia, orciboria, stands for vases, or candlesticks, 

 cerula, were often made of unglazed black, ornamented with engine- 

 turned, or thorny, or scaly ornaments ; this ware is of late period, and 

 probably succeeded the other ware about the 3rd century A.D. ; a few 

 vases of small size for the table have been found of a brown ware, and 

 a class of small vases with egg-shaped bodies and tall necks the 

 ancient phials. 



At the close of the Greek vase art, the paintings had entirely 

 disappeared; the vases entirely coloured black, being ornamented 

 with subjects on relief in imitation of relief ornaments, ci'ustce or 

 emblcmaia, of metallic vases, and vases of this class appear to have 

 been made in black and red glazed ware at Cuma, Capua, and 

 Aretium. This ware, the finest produced by the Roman potteries, 

 and apparently commencing about the 1st century B.C., was called 

 Samian by Plautus, and the writers of the close of the Republic, but 

 Campaniau by Horace and writers of the Empire. Vases of this class 

 have indeed been found in the Greek islands, and may have thence 

 been imported originally to Rome, but the chief site of the fabric wu.s 

 in Aretium, whence it is frequently called Aretine ware. It is dis- 

 tinguished by its close compact paste of a bright red coralline colour, 

 breaking with a fracture like sealing wax, and glazed externally with a 

 mere polish or very thin siliceous glaze. . The vases are of small size 

 chiefly bowls, trullce, cups, culiccn, bottles, yittti, flat, circular, or oval 

 dishes, tureens, either plain and turned on the wheel, or else ornamented 

 externally with subjects in bas-relief, and made from moulds. These 

 moulds 4 were made of a hard compact and pale red clay, and the subjects 

 were produced from moveable types of hard clay set up into composi- 

 tions and stamped on the moulds. The subjects are taken from Roman 

 works of art and mythology, the principal buildings and statues of 

 Rome, gladiators, amusements of the circus, and erotic scenes, or 

 arabesque and floral ornaments. The subjects are arranged in one or 

 more friezes round the vase, and fill up the external surface. These vases 

 are impressed with the names of above 500 potters, some of Gaulish 

 origin, showing that the red ware was manufactured in France and 

 Germany. In the plain vases the names are stamped on the inside of 

 the bottom, while on the vases with bas-reliefs on tessene with letters 

 in relief ; the names of the potters are preceded or followed by the 

 expressions u (ami) by the hand, OF (ficina) the establishment, F (ecit) 

 he made. The majority are slaves distinguished by their single 

 names, but the single names of freedmen or free proprietors appear on 

 some specimens. The potters were called fiyull or figulinarii, as makei s 

 of vases fatUiarii, and rtucidarii and ampullaril or pot makers. The 

 merchants who dealt in the ware were called negotiators artis crclarice : 

 traces of their manufactories and shops have been found at Nancy, 

 Paris, Nismes, Lyons, Clennont, near Bourdeaux, Rheinzabem, 

 Heiligenberg, and Mayence ; while the ware has been found as far east as 

 the Crimea, and west, as the W. coast of England, and distributed 

 throughout Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, the Islands of the yEgean and 

 Archipelago, and the confines of the Roman empire. There is a great 

 difference in the ware ; that of the 1st century B.C. from the potteries 

 of Campania being of finer earth and glaze, ornamented with relief 

 sometimes delicately executed. In Northern Europe, that made 

 under the first Cicsars is of the finest colour, brightest glaze, 

 hardest paste, and best executed ornaments. Under Vespasian and 

 his sons the paste is good, but no longer fine, and the vases resemble 

 imitations of the earlier ware. At the time of the Antonines, A.D. 120, 

 true Samian is no longer found, the shapes are still good, but the 

 fracture and glaze are coarse, and coloured with red lead, or sulphate 

 of iron, and an inferior glaze. After the age of the Antonines, the 



