VOL. XLIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ^ 



repair and render their figures sharp ; and the workers in ivory use such tools of 

 various points and edges for the same purpose. 



Dr. P. therefore thinks, that when Pliny mentions cera in the singular number, 

 though he says pingere, yet as the cestrum is mentioned with it, it must be un- 

 derstood to mean carving or modelling; but that when it is in the plural, and of 

 burning the picture, he must mean the true encaustic or enamel painting, and 

 the ceris must mean a composition, which was capable of enduring the fire; for 

 which, perhaps, the following short reasons may have some weight. 



It appears in the 'id chapter of his 35th book, where Pliny is speaking of the 

 honos imaginum, that modelling was greatly practised, especially the busts of 

 great men, and of very ancient standing. These were made during the lives of 

 the persons, and laid up in their armories, or other repositories, till their deaths, 

 in order to be carried before the deceased in their funeral rites, and exposed to 

 the public, while an oration was made by the nearest of kin, who pointed to the 

 image, as he proceeded, in his elogium on the virtues of the person represented; 

 and this image was modelled in wax, as our wax-work is made at this day, and 

 painted in natural colours, in order to come the nearer to nature. Pliny's words 

 are very clear in this; " expressi cera voltus singulis disponebantur armariis, ut 

 essent imagines, quae comiterentur gentilitia funera, &c." And it is also evi- 

 dent, that in order to take the true resemblance of the persons, whose busts they 

 intended to make for these purposes, they took off a plaster mask from the face, 

 and by way of mould cast melted wax into it ; by which they obtained every fea- 

 ture, and afterwards made it perfect by repairing with proper tools. This is fully 

 declared in his 12th chapter of the same book, which treats of plastics: where, 

 after he has mentioned Dibutades, a potter of Sicyon, as the first inventor of 

 forming the likeness of things in clay or plaster, and of first making images on 

 the corners of his tiles, he gives the invention of taking off masks from the 

 face, for making busts, to Lisistratus, of the same town, brother of Lysippus. 



In short, they appear, in the sequel of this chapter, to have imitated fruits, 

 fishes, and every thing else, by making clay moulds, and casting the wax or 

 other matter into them. It is, by the way, remarkable, that in all these cases 

 of casting or modelling, cera is in the singular number, and must be taken in its 

 literal sense, as being a matter very capable of such a manufacture. 



Now on the other hand, when that word is in the plural, there is some reason 

 to conjecture, that a certain composition is meant, capable of bearing the fire, 

 or when it is laid on ships with a brush ; for we can neither suppose that wax 

 was ever capable simply to bear being burnt, as the encausticae picturae expresses 

 and denotes it; nor that the ceris igni resolutis was to be simply laid on their 

 ships without paint, rosin, turpentine, or some other matters, both to render it 

 ductile and fluid enough not to clog the brush as it cooled, which every one must 



