44 The Roman Cemetery of Uriconium. 



of tlie sand of the field,* and intermixed with these many visible 

 particles of pure black carbon, evidently introduced artificially 

 into the sand. On putting some of the soil in a platinum 

 crucible, and heating it red-hot for a few minutes, all the char- 

 coal was burned away, and I got a pure red sand like that of 

 the cemetery. The contents of these two vessels were quite 

 black, though I have no doubt they were found deeper than the 

 superficial covering of black mould. One of them had evidently 

 been subjected to fire, so that the supposition that this had been 

 filled with some unctuous oblation, and then acted upon by heat 

 in the funeral pile, is not at all improbable.-" 



These glass vessels help to demonstrate that the same forms 

 were observed by the Romans in their performance of the 

 sepulchral rites in Britain as in Italy. Some of them are 

 found greatly affected by fire, and have been no doubt placed 

 on the funeral pile ; others, on the contrary, are perfect, and 

 have evidently never been in the fire, but were no doubt de- 

 posited with the urn. Examples of them, in both conditions, 

 are given in our last wood- cut. The one in the middle of the 

 three to the right has been thus affected by the heat in a lesser 

 degree ; but the other, lying on the ground beneaih it, has been 

 so much melted as to have lost its original shape. 



A very usual accompaniment of Roman interments is the 

 lamp, usually made of terra-cotta. There can be no doubt that, 

 under the influence of sentiments with which we are not well 

 acquainted, lamps were among the usual offerings to the dead, 

 and that, when offered, they were filled with oil and lighted. 

 They were found in the tombs at Pompeii, where they were 

 probably placed in the recesses of the walls by the side of the 

 urns of the dead. Their frequent occurrence under such cir- 

 cumstances gave rise to a number of old legends of the finding 

 of lamps still burning in tombs of the ancients, who, it was sup- 

 posed, had invented a material for the lamp which, once lighted, 

 would burn for ever. One epitaph, found at Salernum, and 

 given in Griiter, which commemorates a lady named Septima, 

 expresses, in what appears to have been intended for elegiac 

 verse, the wish that whoever contributed a burning lamp to 

 her tomb, might have a " golden soil " to cover his ashes. 



HAVE . SEPTIMA . SIT . TIBI 

 TERRA . LEVIS . QVISQ 

 HVIC . TVMVLO . POSVIT 

 ARDENTEM . LVCERNAM 

 ILLIVS . CINERES . AVREA 

 TERRA . TEGAT 



* To explain this, it must be stated that the soil of the field, which is hardly 

 two feet deep, lies upon a deep bed of pure sand, and that the interments had all 

 Lcen Uiado in the sand in which the urns and other objects were found. 



