The group before mentioned of a lion seizing another animal was in some way “apotropaic”—that is, it warded off evil influences like a horseshoe on a door. At Colchester is a group of a sphinx having a skull between its paws, which is much finer in style (compare Espèrandieu, No. 4675). Probably there were similar tombs in London; in the British Museum is a pretty little bone carving of such a sphinx.
A grave slab at Cirencester has a sphinx and two lions carved on it as acroteria. A somewhat similar slab, found in the north by the Roman wall, has two lions with skulls. A lead coffin of specially fine workmanship, found at Sittingbourne, but doubtless made in London, now shown at the British Museum, has pairs of lions guarding a vase (compare Espèrandieu, 4715), and little medallions of the Gorgon’s head on it (Fig. [152]). The most important example of apotropaic sculpture in Britain is the great Gorgon’s head in the pediment of the small Corinthian temple found at Bath.
The apotropaic nature of this sculpture has not, I think, been brought out. It has been explained as a symbol of Minerva, and the building has been called the Temple of Minerva; but for this there is no evidence. (I may say here that Lysons assigned to this building a fragment of an inscription which mentions repairs, but I do not think that this fragment should be separated from another which clearly belonged to a second building. Since writing this, I find that Mr. Irvine had already made a similar observation. Wonder has been expressed that this head should be bearded, but this appears to be the Italian tradition.)
In any story of life in Roman London, some of the atmosphere of mixed faiths and symbols suggested in Kingsley’s Hypatia should appear.
CHAPTER VII
THE MOSAICS
“Here is grandeur of form, dignity of character, and great breadth of treatment which reminds me of the best Greek schools. Were I a painter I should venture to enlarge upon the quality and distribution of colour.”
—Westmacott.
SOME screen appears to be set up between us and our Roman works of art. Even the mosaics, which we might have supposed would have been interesting—even fascinating—seem to be regarded as mere museum objects and subjects for antiquarian tracts. So far as I know there is only one book which considers them as a whole (Morgan’s Romano-British Mosaics), and this is rather a full index than a discussion of their artistic qualities. An excellent chapter in Ward’s Roman Buildings should be mentioned. Even professional scholars apologise for them. Dr. Haverfield wrote: “They have the look of work imitated from patterns rather than of designs sketched by artists.”... “We admire them mainly, I think, because they are old and expensive. Few Romano-British mosaics are real works of art.”
Against such a judgment I will call three witnesses—Westmacott, the sculptor, as above, William Morris, the master pattern designer, and Mr. Alfred Powell. Morris says: “This splendid Roman scrollwork, though not very beautiful in itself, is the parent of very beautiful things. It is perhaps in the noble craft of mosaic that the foreshadowings of the new art are best seen. There is a sign in them of the coming wave of the great change which was to turn late Roman art, the last of the old, into Byzantine art, the first of the new.” Mr. Powell, who repaired the Orpheus Pavement at the Barton, Cirencester, and became thoroughly acquainted with the powerfully-drawn animals on it, says: “These creatures of the forest have been set out here in the tiny scraps of coloured stone with an ease and mastery that is remarkable. There is grace in their gesture that has seldom been reached in the art of even the highest period of the life of a nation.” The Woodchester Orpheus Pavement, which, judging from points of resemblance in design and details (a horned and bearded griffin, for instance), must have been by the same master, was a magnificent work, as, indeed, the fragment of its splendid border in the British Museum is enough to show.