Fig. 101.
Fig. 102.
Fig. 103.
Any idea of thought in decoration is difficult for us to apprehend. The records of the pavements which have been found in Britain deserve study from this point of view. The whole art of the time witnesses not only to the professional skill of artists, but to the thoughts and desires of the provincial Romans—and natives too, doubtless—who demanded such works. They speak of a time when the old beliefs had been for a large part allegorised and fitted into a sort of poetic cosmogony; the designs often dealt with the order of Nature. Many interesting details are to be found in these mosaics; Fig. [a]102] is a sundial which appears with a celestial sphere on the pavement at Bramdean. The fragment of inscription (Fig. [103]) is from Thruxton. Large square mosaics which seem to have been the floors of central halls have been mentioned. In two cases, such floors found in Britain had sunk water basins at their centres. At Woodchester four columns were placed about the central space, and there was doubtless an opening in the roof above. Such a central hall would have been an Atrium, and this helps to explain the planning of Roman houses in Britain.
CHAPTER VIII
WALL PAINTINGS AND MARBLE LININGS
BY putting together, in our imagination, the mosaic floors, the fragments of wall paintings, and the marble linings, we can gain a fairly certain knowledge of what the finer Roman interiors in Londinium were like, and we may further add to the impression by remembering the many precious objects in silver, bronze, pottery and glass, which are in our museums. Broken remnants of wall paintings have been found in large quantities, and pieces are preserved at the British, the Guildhall, and the London Museums, also at the Society of Antiquaries. Some account of several of them was given by Roach Smith in his Illustrations of Roman London, from which Fig. [a]104] is reduced. The fragment (5, Fig. [a]104]), now with the others in the British Museum, is part of a pilaster-like strip about 8 in. wide, of foliage springing symmetrically on each side of a central vertical stem; it is on a dark ground, and marginal lines divide it off from a red space which covered the main surfaces of the wall. This “pilaster” was doubtless one of several. The morsels (6 and 7, Fig. [a]104]) evidently belonged together; the one-sided nature of the design suggests that it was next the angle of a room; and the loop in the upper part of 7 looks like the end of a festoon; 9 is somewhat similar; and the others may all have belonged to “pilaster” strips.
