30 ON COLOUR. Part I. 



given to glass windows or panes ; and paintings on glass were 

 long known in Home. Moreover, the fact of glass panes 

 having been made before A.d. 79, has been established by the 

 discovery of one at Pompeii, as well as by the fragments of 

 others found at Herculaneum. These, it is true, are colourless ; 

 but glass of various hues was employed for many purposes : 

 for making beads, false stones, and other objects of ornament 

 and utility, in the Augustan age at Rome.* Seneca (Ep. 86.) 

 speaks of Roman ceilings quite covered with glass (vitro 

 absconditur camera) ; and glass mosaic is said by Pliny to 

 have been introduced into Italy by Agrippa. Indeed, glass 

 ornaments were brought from Egypt long before; as at the 

 fete given to the Roman people by Scaurus, and on other oc- 

 casions, when they were worn as personal trinkets, in ac- 

 cordance with a common custom in Egypt ; where coloured 

 glass was very generally employed for ornaments of different 

 kinds, as well as for vases, for false stones, and for many 

 purposes.f Egypt indeed had for ages been famed for its 

 manufacture of glass, and it was doubtless from Egypt that 

 Sidon and afterwards Tyre, and at a much later time the 

 Romans, learnt this valuable art. It is scarcely worth while 

 to refute the story told by Pliny of the supposed discovery by 

 some Phoenician sailors returning from Egypt, with a cargo 

 of natron, which they could only have required for the very 

 purpose of making glass, the knowledge of which they had 

 derived from that country ; and the accidental discovery of 

 glass-making could only be looked for in the land which pro- 

 duced the natron. But a more decisive proof of its having 



* See Part II. § 86. See also Raoul-Rochette, "Peintures Antiques," p. 368 

 —390, &c. 



f Probably, as at Rome, for magnifying objects. Seneca (N. Q. i. 3, p. 834) 

 says : " Poma per vitrum adspicientibus multo majora sunt ;" and (i. 6, p. 837) 

 " formossiora quam sint Yidentur si innatant vitro." A lens has even been 

 found at Pompeii, and another at Nineveh. Nero having weak eyes used a 

 green glass (said to be an emerald) when looking at the gladiatorial shows : 

 " spectabat Smaragdo." (Plin. xxxvii. 51.) 



