The inscription on the Clapton tomb was very short, hardly more than names, and it does not seem to have contained any expression of faith. The Haydon Square tomb had no inscription. This reticence is characteristic. “The historical inscriptions of this age can be counted on the fingers of one hand.... It is curious to find a noteworthy lack of ordinary sepulchral inscriptions of private persons in the fourth century; there are very few Christian tombs, but it is much more surprising to find a lack of those of the ordinary heathen type. Conceivably fourth-century tombs were handiest for the Saxon invader” (Sir C. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest). Christian inscriptions are very few in France also; there are not, I believe, half a dozen of the fourth century existing.
This tomb and the other are good examples of the skilful way in which forms were obtained in a block of stone without cutting to waste; observe how the mouldings in Figs. 49 and 50 lie just on the surfaces. This is a lesson for our own days.
I have felt that this able work in fine material could hardly have had its origin in Britain, but further consideration suggests that the balance of evidence is in our favour. We have seen that other works are in white marble; there are in the British Museum two or three fragments of white marble slabs, while in the London Museum there is a complete one. Several fragments of dado linings are also known. In the heyday of the mosaic pavements there must have been some “firm” of marble importers in London. The general resemblance of the Clapton sarcophagus to that found at Haydon Square is strongly in favour of their common origin. The cover was attached to the receptacle in a similar way with iron straps in both; in each case the flutes are separated by a sunk line. The man’s bust is very similar to the upper parts of the figures on the third and fourth steles above described. Altogether, I could suppose that both sarcophagi came from one shop, and that they were both the resting-places of Christians.
Fig. 52.
A number of tablets which have been found must have been fixed in buildings or against walls. At the British Museum is a small fragment with a part of an animal incised, probably one of a pair facing a central object. (Compare the griffins on the enamelled plate found in London, in the British Museum.) Some of these tablets are of Purbeck and other native marbles, and this shows that we had competent marble masons settled here—probably the same as the mosaic workers.
A small tablet, found in Goodman’s Fields, about 12 in. by 15 in., now at the Society of Antiquaries, was described by Roach Smith as of native green marble; and a fragment in the British Museum, found in Philpot Lane, is of green marble. The former (Fig. [52]), judging by the wording of the inscription and style of the lettering, may be dated about A.D. 100.
On the whole, these Roman tombs had dignity and beauty, and a study of picked examples throughout Britain would be worth making. The lettering is admirable, and the inscriptions often have a quite human sound which is touching. The portrait reliefs are competent common work. We should now have to go to an R.A. for such things, and come away again without getting them. Some of the symbolic decoration speaks a universal language; the flowering scroll border and festoon of the slab, and the baskets of fruits on the sarcophagus, both in the British Museum, are more than ornaments. A stele at Colchester having a relief of a seated woman putting away her spinning into her work-box is really poetical. The sculpture is crude, but the idea is as fresh and beautiful as any tomb in the world can show.