As we pass to Northern Gaul we find examples of a glass of a pronounced greenish tint more and more predominating—bulky urns, square and spherical, and jugs with ‘claw’ handles. All of these forms we are familiar with in England. The museums of Amiens and Boulogne are especially rich in this glass, and in Paris the local finds are well represented in the Musée Carnavalet.
On the other hand, in the glass of the Rhine district, including of course the Moselle, we have a return to the more varied types that we met with in the south. Trèves was the northern rival of Arles; it formed the centre of a rich district, including Lorraine on the one hand and the Rhine provinces on the other, where the manufacture of glass by the third century became an important industry. And this district has for us a special interest, for here more than anywhere else we have some evidence to show that the industry was carried on without interruption throughout the Middle Ages. The museums of Trèves, of Cologne and of Bonn, are above all rich in Roman glass, and the German archæologists have endeavoured—and this has hardly been attempted elsewhere—to arrange this glass in a chronological sequence. They think that they can distinguish the following stages in the industry:—1. Up to 50 A.D. glass was a rarity in the north, but the millefiori and marbled glass of the south was imported to some extent. 2. After the middle of the first century, glass-works were established for the manufacture of large urns and smaller vessels of a ‘Natur-glas,’ bluish rather than greenish in tint. 3. In the time of Hadrian (117-130 A.D.) a pure white glass was introduced; this was more liable to decay than the older bluish glass. 4. The period of the greatest development was about 200 A.D. Many kinds of decoration were in fashion, as zig-zag threadings on coloured glass. 5. After 250 A.D. This was the time of the glass with the Frontinus stamp.[[53]] The prevailing tint is a strong green, no longer bluish; the decoration is given chiefly by engraving and cutting; Christian subjects begin to appear. To this period also belongs glass decorated with coloured medallions of glass paste.
I give this scheme of classification under all reserve; the interlarding of a period of white glass between two stages of ‘green glass’ may perhaps be open to criticism, but at all events it is a step in the right direction. It must be borne in mind that this Rhenish glass belongs to the same Romano-Celtic family as that found in France, but, as in the latter country, the Celtic element is scarcely perceptible. The art was an entirely new one, and there was no earlier tradition to influence the work as in the case of the contemporary pottery, armour, or sculpture.
It so happens that the Roman glass of Gaul has been most carefully studied in a district far away from the route that we have been following. In Western France the researches of M. Benjamin Fillon (L’Art de la terre chez les Poitevins, 1864, and other works) have brought to light the remains of old glass-works. These appear to have been generally situated far from the main centres, and they were often associated with potteries. It would even seem that glass was at one time more in favour and perhaps cheaper than earthenware. A curious point is the number of localities in Poitou and La Vendée which bear names such as La Verrerie and Verrière; at as many as seven places with names of this class, M. Fillon claims to have found the remains of Gallo-Roman glass-works. These do not appear to have been established before the time of Trajan, and it is to the age of the Antonines in the second century that the more important examples of glass are to be attributed. Of somewhat later date than this, however, are the fifty pieces of white glass from the villa and tomb of a femme-artiste at St. Médard-des-Prés. This was M. Fillon’s most important find; some of the vases contained various coloured substances and resins, and they were closed by stoppers of wood or by sheaths of bronze.[[54]]
The British Museum has lately acquired a large collection of Gallo-Roman glass formed by M. Moret. Among this glass—it comes chiefly from late Gallic cemeteries in the neighbourhood of Paris, as from Corbeil and Conflans (Confluentia), and also from the Rheims district—may be seen beakers with circular feet and wide-mouthed cups with rounded bases.[[55]] To one of these a fantastic decoration has been given by a contorted streak of blood-like tint in the midst of the glass—caused by the perhaps accidental presence of a fragment of copper-oxide; we have here at any rate one of the earliest instances of the use of this valuable pigment to obtain a transparent red. Notice, too, the large receptacle cast in the form of a fish; similar vessels have been found at Arles, and they have been brought into connection with the well-known Christian symbol of the ἰχθύς.
Roman Glass in Britain
There does not seem to be any example of a vessel of glass from a pre-Roman tomb in Britain. The little ribbed bowls that have been found in Celtic tombs further south did not apparently reach our country. The ὕαλα σκεύη and the λυγκούρια mentioned by Strabo in an involved passage as among the imports into Britain, we must interpret as beads of glass and amber. From that time until the eighth century, when the Venerable Bede wrote his history, we have not a word of documentary evidence bearing upon the question of glass in our country. Nor have we any definite evidence, apart from a few lumps of glass that may have had their origin in an accidental fire, that any glass-works existed in England during this long interval,—no evidence, that is to say, apart from that based upon the large amount of Roman glass found in England and the size of many of the specimens. The English glass, however, in no way differs from that taken from Roman tombs in the north of France. I have mentioned already the most noticeable types—the large urns, both spherical and quadrangular, the graceful jugs and vases with ribbed handles, and the little bowls of thin moulded glass with scenes taken from the circus. It is perhaps remarkable that the art of the enameller on metal, which we know at this time had been brought to a great perfection in Britain,[[56]] appears in no way to have influenced the glass-blower, and it would seem that in Britain glass vessels have been rarely found together with specimens of champlevé enamel.[[57]]
Most of the finer examples of native Roman glass in our museums have been excavated from cemeteries adjacent to the lower Thames valley, around Colchester and other stations to the north, but above all on the southern bank, in the district lying between the mouth of the Medway and the Isle of Thanet. In this neighbourhood, in the flat land between Sittingbourne and Faversham, were situated what were probably the most extensive potteries of Britain, and it is hereabouts if anywhere in England that we might look for traces of glass-works of Roman date. As we go further west and further north, glass, large examples at any rate, becomes comparatively rare, and this is true even of the neighbourhood of such important stations as York and Cirencester.
