236 



Roman Samian Ware. 



hail! on another, VIVAS, may yon live! on a third, BIBE, 

 drink ; and on a fourth, IMPLE, fill ! I believe an example 

 has been found in England with an inscription, urging the 

 person who used it to drink heartily; but such inscriptions 

 are rare. 



The great quantity of this Samian ware which is found on 

 Roman sites, admits of easy explanation, from the circumstance 

 that it was held in great favour, and that the manufactories on 

 the Continent continued to work with activity in producing it 

 during the whole Roman period. The number of names of 

 potters, collected from fragments found in England alone, 

 amounts to more than two thousand, and we must suppose 

 them to have been spread over a long period. Yet it is some- 

 what singular that we perceived no gradual change in the style 

 of art they display, or in the subjects. This may, perhaps, be 

 explained by the supposition that the potters preserved tra- 

 ditionally the same series of subjects, and perhaps the very 

 dies which had stamped them, during two or three centuries ; 

 and that, even at the latest period, a figure, or a group, bearing 

 the marked style of the age, was only introduced for some 

 special cause. This explanation seems to receive a rather 

 singular confirmation from a very interesting vase of Samian 

 ware in the museum of Mr. Roach Smith, of which he has given 



Fig.~8. Yictory Crowning a Warrior. 



an engraving in the second volume of the Collectanea Antiqiia, 

 p. 13. It was found in a Roman villa at Hart lip, in Kent, and 

 bears distinctly the evidence of being a work of very late 

 date. It has the potter's mark, SABINI'M, in late-formed 

 characters, without a label, stamped on the exterior side, in 

 the manner of the Arretine ware, and not across the bottom 

 inside. The mythological figures on this vase, such as Leda 

 and the swan, and Diana returning from the chase, and carry- 



