Another winged figure preceding the quadriga, with a thyrsus in his left hand, is in the act of seizing the bridle of one of the animals. The whole is painted in white on a black ground, except some few of the details, which are yellow, and the car and mantle of the genius, which are red. The handles represent knotted cords, or flexible branches interlaced, which terminate in the heads of animals. This vase is much cracked, probably in consequence of the violence of the fire.
Some drinking vessels of peculiar construction have been found, which merit a particular description. These were in the shape of a horn, the primitive drinking-vessel, and had commonly a hole at the point, to be closed with the finger, until the drinker, raising it above his mouth, suffered the liquor to flow in a stream from the orifice.
DRINKING VESSEL.[ToList]
This method of drinking, which is still practiced in some parts of the Mediterranean, must require great skill in order to hit the mark exactly. Sometimes the hole at the tip was closed, and one or two handles fitted to the side, and then the base formed the mouth; and sometimes the whimsical fancy of the potter fashioned it into the head of a pig, a stag, or any other animal. One in the Neapolitan Museum has the head of an eagle with the ears of a man.
These vases are usually of clay, but cheap as is the material, it is evident by their good workmanship that they were not made by the lowest artists.
The learned seem to have been generally mistaken on the subject of glass-making among the ancients, who appear to have been far more skillful than had been imagined. The vast collection of bottles, vases, glasses, and other utensils, discovered at Pompeii, is sufficient to show that the ancients were well acquainted with the art of glass-blowing.
There is no doubt but that the Romans possessed glass in sufficient plenty to apply it to purposes of household ornament. The raw material appears from Pliny's account to have undergone two fusions; the first converted it into a rough mass called ammonitrum, which was melted again and became pure glass. We are also told of a dark-colored glass resembling obsidian, plentiful enough to be cast into solid statues.
Pliny mentions having seen images of Augustus cast in this substance. It probably was some coarse kind of glass resembling the ammonitrum, or such as that in which the scoriæ of our iron furnaces abound. Glass was worked either by blowing it with a pipe, as is now practiced, by turning in a lathe, by engraving and carving it, or, as we have noticed, by casting it in a mould.