The Roman Potteries at Durobrivce. 



461 



country, and by artists who could hardly have done otherwise 

 than copy what was constantly before their eyes, we can hare 

 no doubt that these are all true pictures, pictures which we 

 could hardly in any other way have obtained, of life in Britain 

 under the Romans, and they show us, as well as could be 

 shown iu subjects capable of being represented by such artists, 

 those occupations in which the enjoyment of life was then 

 believed to consist. The more common of these subjects are 

 hunting scenes, and scenes taken from the amphitheatre or 

 the racecourse. 



We have abundant evidence, in a great variety of monu- 

 ments of different classes, of the love of the people of Roman 

 Britain for the pleasures and excitement of the chase. It is 

 sufficiently well known how, among the bones of animals which 

 had been eaten at the table, which are found on Roman sites in 

 England and Scotland, a large proportion testify to the pre- 

 sence in great abundance of the wild boar, of the wild deer (of 

 several varieties), and of almost every animal which comes 

 under the name of game. Britain, too, was celebrated for its 

 dogs, and it would not, I imagine, be impossible for the com- 

 parative anatomist to reproduce the forms of the varieties of 

 the dog known here during the Roman period from these 

 figures on the pottery compared with bones of the dog still 

 found among Roman remains. The Roman writers speak not 

 unfrequently of the excellence of the British dogs, especially 

 of the dogs for hunting, and they seem to have formed a 

 rather important article of export. In the figures on the Duro- 

 brivian pottery, the dogs are pictured, and evidently with 

 truthfulness, with distinct characteristics of different varieties. 

 For instance, the dog hunting the hare in our cut (Fig. 2), 



i H n ii ii ii n \ ii ii i! n ii ii ii ii -i ii n li ii n ii n m ii ii ii ii ii 



Fig. 2. — Hunting the Hare. 



taken from an example of Durobrivian ware engraved in Artis's 

 plates, must be recognized at once as a greyhound, the same 

 variety of dog which is still used for the same purpose. It has 

 been suggested that this may be the dog to which the Romans 

 gave the name of vertagus, and which is said to have been a 

 British dog. Martial describes it in one of his epigrams as 



