I have already pointed out that the Greeks had at first no separate word for glass. Herodotus speaks of ear-ornaments made of ‘melted stone’ (λίθινα χυτά). Plato, in the Timæus, thinks it necessary to explain that he uses the word ὕαλος in the same sense. In the treasure-lists of temples, of the early part of the fourth century, where the same word is used, the reference is apparently to vessels of glass. We hear, too, of seals of glass (σφραγῖδες ὑάλιναι) in similar inscriptions of the same date. The word ὕαλον ultimately became the equivalent of the Latin vitrum.
In any case, it is from Greek tombs of the Hellenistic period that we obtain our earliest specimens of glass, other than the small articles of verroterie that formed the exclusive subject-matter of the last chapter. There have been preserved a few rare bowls of transparent glass, sometimes quite colourless, or more often stained with blue or with a honey-like tint resembling that of the hyacinth or the sard. These bowls are distinguished by the purity of their outline; they have apparently been finished on a lathe, but whether the glass was originally simply cast, or, as is possible, blown into a mould, it is impossible to say. The only ornament consists in one or more incised lines near the margin. A few of these bowls have been obtained in Athens, others come from tombs in the south of Italy,—we have unfortunately no means of fixing the date in either case. It is rather from the refinement of their curves and the restraint in the decoration that we are led to class them as pre-Roman.
But it is from the glass found in the tombs of Canosa that we can form the best idea of what the Greeks of Ptolemaic times were capable in this direction, and we are fortunate in having in London a remarkable series of glass vessels from these tombs. Canusium was one of the few cities of Apulia that preserved much of its Greek culture as well as the partial use of the Greek language well into the time of the Roman Empire. The beautiful specimens in the Glass-Room in the British Museum, some of them so thoroughly Hellenic in character, are referred to the first century of our era, but in general character and feeling, as well as in their shapes, they reflect the art of an earlier period. A bowl of pure white glass—the sharp outlines, especially of the solid handles, show that it was finished by a cutting tool—is of a form (the σκύφος of the Greeks) well known both in pottery and metal ware. The two graceful bowls, decorated in gold with an exquisite design of acanthus leaves, combined with a small plant with tendrils, both radiating from a central flower, even in their present condition, perhaps surpass in beauty any other known example of ancient glass. From the technical side, the marvellous skill with which the two shells of glass of which these bowls are built up, are fitted together, should be carefully noted. It will be observed that the inner shell projects considerably beyond the outer one, and that the latter at the line of junction has been apparently levelled down by subsequent grinding. How far the two layers have been soldered together by subsequent firing, it would be difficult to say. Between the two shells, the gold leaf that forms the base of the decoration has been applied. We are reminded (but longo intervallo, not only artistically but technically also) both of the so-called cemetery glass of later date, and of the ‘doubled glasses’ made in the eighteenth century in Bohemia.
Scarcely less remarkable are the other examples of glass from Canosa exhibited in the same case. Here may be seen two bowls built up with coils of little rods, each rod containing an opaque white string in the centre of a clear base; these, as I have mentioned, are identical with the bowls, now in the Assyrian Department, brought back by Layard from Nineveh. In addition to these varied types of glass there were found in the same tombs some large dishes of millefiori ware, and finally a large flat bowl of white glass with a somewhat rude pattern cut with the wheel, and with a row of spurs projecting from near the edge. This, as will be seen further on, is a method of decoration more common at a time of artistic decline, in the third and fourth centuries.
Quite Greek in character are the strange little unguent pots that come from Cyprus. On the cup-like overlapping lid of one in the British Museum may be seen outlined in black, apparently between two layers of glass, a little cupid bearing a bunch of grapes. Although many of these little pots have lately been found in Cyprus, it is only in a few cases that the design on the lid, so truly Greek in style, has been preserved.
There is some reason to believe that when the use of the blowing-tube was first introduced it was applied as a supplement to a moulding process. The hollow vesicle of glass—the paraison, to use the old French word—was blown into a more or less hemispherical mould, and the irregularities of the resulting bowl were then removed by grinding on a wheel. At any rate, during what we may call the Alexandrian period, a bowl of simple outline, whether shallow or deep, is the characteristic form. In the case of certain dishes in the shape of a boat, the wheel has played a still more important part.
For the personal adornment of their women the Greeks continued to make a variety of small objects of glass, more or less on the old lines. We find, too, intaglios engraved on glass of various and often most exquisite tints at least as early as the fourth century B.C. In the preparation of these pastes the greatest attention was paid to the exact imitation of precious stones. At a somewhat later date, in the second century B.C., cameos in high relief cast in glass pastes of various colours came into vogue. The ‘mother’ design was modelled in clay, and upon this matrix the mould in which the glass was to be cast was formed. These early glass cameos are compared by the late Dr. Murray to the circular, moulded reliefs on the black pottery of this period, and he points out that they apparently preceded the large reliefs engraved on stones of the onyx family which were so much in favour a little later (Greek Archæology, p. 160). It must be borne in mind that neither in the case of cameo or intaglio could the paste copy be made directly from the original stone. The paste gem, thus moulded, was often carefully finished by hand.
Early Roman Glass
In the absence of any continuous series of glass vessels that can be classed as Greek, it would seem somewhat of a contradiction to say that the artistic glass of the Romans was founded upon examples distinctly Greek in outline and decoration. And yet there can be no doubt that in the earlier period, at any rate, the source of inspiration of the Roman glass-maker was the same as that of the contemporary potter or bronze-worker. At the time when objects of glass were first brought to Italy in the ships of the Greek traders, we may be certain that the places where this glass was made—whether these be sought at Alexandria or at one or more of the cities of the Phœnician coast—had been completely Hellenised. Again, the new material found its way in through towns which, if not Greek speaking, were thoroughly Greek in culture, through Cumæ—in the neighbourhood of this city glass was probably first made in Italy—and through the semi-Greek towns of Apulia. But in one important respect this Greek glass differed from the contemporary bronze and pottery. It was to the Greeks a new art with few old traditions, and these not of Hellenic origin. In the first century before Christ the industry was only beginning to be of any importance. It thus came about that in a greater degree than perhaps any other branch of ancient art, the manufacture of glass may be regarded as an art essentially Roman. This fact may help to account for the extreme poverty of the material for its history and methods of manufacture to be found in Roman writers. There were in this case no Greek authorities for these writers to fall back upon. Compare the meagre and confused narrative of Pliny in the brief section that he devotes to glass with his detailed, and in a measure scholarly, accounts in other departments of the arts where he could borrow from earlier Greek technical treatises.
The glass that we know as Roman was made for a period of about four hundred years. It was manufactured at one time or another in nearly every country into which the Romans penetrated, from Syria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, to Spain and Britain on the other. It has even been found in the tombs of tribes that the Romans never subdued, as in Denmark and Sweden. There is scarcely an application of glass known in Europe in the eighteenth century that was not known also to the Romans, and they were masters of the various processes by which glass may be decorated.