When Rome was in the height of her luxury, murrhine cups were introduced from the East. What this substance was, the ruins of Pompeii have never revealed; some maintain it was porcelain, others think it was a species of spar.
Dr. Henderson adopts the opinion of M. de Rozière that these cups were of fluor-spar; but this article is not found in Karamania, from which district of Parthia both Pliny and Propertius agree that they came, though they differ with respect to their nature; its geographic situation seems confined to Europe. The anecdote told by Lampridius of Heliogabalus (502) proves, not the similarity of material, but only the equal rareness and value of vessels of onyx and murrhine.
AMPHORÆ, RHYTONS, ETC. (Brit. Mus.).
A writer in the Westminster Review for July, 1825, believes them to have been porcelain cups from China; the expression of Propertius, “cocta focis,” proves that they were manufactured. In the time of Belon (1555) the Greeks called them the myrrh of Smyrna, from murex, a shell. From this it seems that their name was given to the vases from a resemblance of colours to those of the murex. Stolberg (Travels, ix. 280) says he saw in a collection at Catania a little blue vase, believed to be a vas murrhinum.
The modern jars in any of the wine districts of Italy, such as Asti Montepulciano or Montefiascone, thin earthen two-handled vessels holding some twenty quarts, are almost identical with the ancient amphoræ. Suetonius speaks of a candidate for the quæstorship who drank the contents of a whole amphora at a dinner given by Tiberius. This amphora was probably of a smaller size. Wooden vessels for wine seem to have been unfamiliar to the Greeks and Romans; they, however, occasionally employed glass. Bottles, vases, and cups of that material, which may be seen often enough now in collections of antiquities, show the great taste which in these and in other matters they possessed. A few of these are given to illustrate our text. Skins of animals, rendered impervious by oil or resinous gums, were probably the most ancient receptacles for wine after it was taken from the vat. To these there are frequent allusions in Homer and Isaiah. Vessels of clay, with a coating of pitch, were introduced subsequently.
