Chapter V: Part 5

_Birchin Lane, etc._—In 1785 a small piece was discovered here of “a fine tesselated pavement of very small bricks and stones; of this, only one corner appeared, which is composed of black, green, and white stones and brick, forming a beautiful border.” Another account says that “the tesseræ measured about one-quarter of an inch and were of various colours.” I am particular about this, for the bright colours were doubtless of glass. I find a contemporary drawing of this fragment in the Guildhall Library, from which it appears that there was a fair blue besides the colours mentioned. (Fig. 93; compare Fig. 92 and a border illustrated by Mr. Ward.) Outside it were big red “brick” tesseræ. There is in the Guildhall Museum a fragment of another mosaic found in Birchin Lane. It is part of a star-shaped all-over pattern of a well-known type (the Barton Cirencester, etc.). Fig. 94 A shows the fragment, and Fig. 95 is a diagram of the complete pattern. Another piece at the Guildhall has a sea-monster of small scale but most skilful execution. The place of finding is not noted, but it is probably a fragment discovered in Birchin Lane in 1857, described in _V.C.H._ as part of a pavement “representing a sea-horse.” Two other small pieces in the same museum are very similar in colour and quality, and may have come from the same source. One of these seems to have belonged to a pavement of square panels of knot-work framed in scroll bands (Fig. 94, B), or it may have been part of a panelled border similar to Fig. 92. Morsels of painted plaster were also found in Birchin Lane, where there must have been a good house.

FIG. 96.
]

A fragment of mosaic at the London Museum comes from another all-over star-pattern similar to that at the Guildhall, but this piece was next to the outer border of the pavement. This fragment is of particularly beautiful colouring—quite a purple floor. I give a sketch of the fragment in Fig. 96; it must have come next the border of a pattern like Fig. 95.

_Threadneedle Street._—Several pieces of London mosaic are shown in the Roman corridor at the British Museum, but not very effectively. Two are exhibited as given by Mr. E. Moxhay, but it is not added that they were found in Threadneedle Street in 1841. One is part of a passage and the other is a square from the centre of a room. (See illustrations in Roach Smith’s _Roman London_, from which Fig. 97 is taken.) Another piece found at East India House, Leadenhall Street, is not set up rightly. The pattern is of two interlacing squares; the margin should not be parallel to either of these, but it should touch two of the points of the star form. (Fig. 98. See Sir W. Tite’s illustration in _Archæologia_; compare also the Bucklersbury pavement at the Guildhall.) This floor came from the same level as the Bacchus mosaic and not far away from its position; probably the small chamber to which it belonged was part of the building which contained the large square hall of the Bacchus mosaic.

FRAGMENT OF ROMAN TESSELLATED PAVEMENT DISCOVERED AT THE DEPTH OF 14
FEET UNDER THE FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCH IN THREADNEEDLE STREET.
APRIL 1841.
FIG. 97.
]

_The Bank._—A fourth piece in the Museum is a square panel from Lothbury. Allen describes it as “An ornamental centre, measuring 4 ft. each way, of an apartment 11 ft. square; beyond this were tiles of an inch square extending to the sides of the room.” It is another example of the plan of having a comparatively small central panel liberally framed in much plain red work. The device in the centre is a cruciform pattern. I can hardly think that from, say, 250 A.D. it would not have been recognised as a cross indeed. Compare the small cruciform centres of two squares of mosaic exhibited close by.

FIG. 98.
]

The floor mosaics at the British Museum are dispersed in two galleries and a staircase, and even so each one is badly presented. Fragments of the Bacchus floor are shown without any key-plan of the whole. Of five on the north wall of the Roman gallery, the place where only one was found is told. The interesting little Orpheus mosaic discovered at Withington is shown by three single fragments, although an excellent restored engraving was published in _Archæologia_ when it was found. I wish space could be found for setting them in their due relation and completing the composition in outline. The surface requires careful cleaning and some repolishing. The floor from Thruxton on the north staircase has lost its centre since it was engraved. The engraving itself is shown in the gallery a hundred yards away, without any reference from one to the other. In this case, I think, the centre should be painted in on the plaster filling of the original.

These mosaics must have been drawn out on the levelled beds prepared to receive them by the master artist and filled in by him and his assistants. The preparation for such a floor is made clear in the description of a London mosaic found in 1785: “This pavement, as well as most of the rest, was laid in three distinct beds; the lowest very coarse, about 3 in. thick, and mixed with large pebbles; the second of fine mortar, very hard and reddish in colour, from having been mixed with powdered brick; this was about 1 in. in thickness, and upon it the bricks [tesseræ] were embedded in fine white cement” (_Archæol._, vol. viii.). The Bacchus pavement described before “was bedded on a layer of brickdust and lime of about an inch.” Powdered brick (tile) and lime made a strong cement which would finish perfectly smoothly and provide an inviting surface to draw and work upon.

Several mosaics while not quite plain were simpler in design and perhaps coarser in execution than those already described. A star-shaped fragment found in Bishopsgate Street, illustrated by Roach Smith, was of black and white tesseræ. It was probably the central panel of a floor, as Roach Smith said. A mosaic found at Lincoln had a similar star-shaped panel at the centre. About 1840 a tessellated pavement was found in Bishopsgate-Within “of black and white tesseræ in squares and diamonds” (_V.C.H._). In Bush Lane “a pavement of white tesseræ” is recorded. On the site of the Guildhall “irregular cubes of dark-grey slate and white marble” were found (_Journal B.A.A._ xix.).

Another pavement, found in Lombard Street in 1785, was “composed of pieces of black and white stone one-third of an inch square, probably deposited in regular order” (_Archæol._ viii.). These black and white mosaics were doubtless like the counter-changed patterns found at Wroxeter, Silchester, etc. At the latter the Christian church had a square space for the altar paved in this way. Several years ago I drew a fragment of an identical design at Lincoln. This was probably a fourth-century fashion. The others may be a little earlier generally, but they overlapped into the Christian period.

Many floors have been found in London which were wholly of coarse tesseræ of red, or of a few simple colours accidentally distributed. One of these is described as of irregular tesseræ about 2 in. by 1½ in., mostly red, but some black and white. A room 17½ ft. by 14 ft., in Leadenhall Street, had coarse tesseræ red, black and white, 1¼ in. square, and a similar floor “of red bricks about an inch square with a few black ones and white stones” was found in Lombard Street. Some floors found at Silchester had circular and polygonal tiles used with mosaic cubes filling up the interspaces. At Bath, if I recollect aright, there are fragments of pleasant floors in which larger irregular pieces of marble are set here and there in a floor mainly of large red tesseræ.

At Silchester a polishing tool is said to have been found, being a lump of marble with an iron socket for the attachment of a handle (Middleton’s _Rome_).

A general comparison of the British mosaics brings out the resemblances between the members of certain groups. The similarity of the Cirencester and Woodchester Orpheus pavements has already been mentioned. The London floor found at the Excise Office was very like the mosaics at Bignor in both the patterns and figure work. The same pavements resemble others found at Silchester, and also the Cirencester and Woodchester mosaics. A pavement found at Stonesfield, near Woodstock, had a wreath of foliage springing from a head similar to that of Woodchester. It is obvious that elaborate works in isolated villas cannot have been home-made, and it is likely that this group at least was the work of craftsmen established in some central city. No centre is so likely as Londinium, a wealthy town, the most conveniently placed for the importation of materials. We think of these works as “decadent,” but really there was a new life in them. The centre of origin of the later type seems to have been Alexandria, and similar works to our own are found in Asia Minor, North Africa and Gaul. The use of glass in these mosaics is likely to have been an Alexandrian innovation. Price gives a list of five London mosaics in which glass was used, and I may add the fragment at Birchin Lane described above. Glass was also used at Cirencester and Woodchester: the purple tesseræ in the fine border of the latter in the British Museum must be glass.

FIG. 99.
]

FIG. 100.
]

Taking into consideration the great similarity of mosaics found in the East—those from Halicarnassus, for instance, now in the British Museum—to those found in the West, the character of the patterns, the mystical nature of some of the figure designs, and the swift ability of the workmanship, I am drawn to the conclusion that the craftsmen are likely to have been Greeks. Some confirmation of this is to be found in the fact noticed by Wright, that the Greek H sometimes appears for E in the few mosaic inscriptions which exist. Mosaics must, I think, have been works of the prosperous Constantinian age. The floor at Frampton had a XP monogram on it (Fig. 99); the Orpheus pavement at Horkstow, accepted as Christian by Cabrol, had crosses (Fig. 99); and a second one at Winterton has a red cross by one of the animals; the pavement at Thruxton, in the British Museum, has crosses set in the border in what seems to be a significant way (Fig. 100). The other details on this figure also have a Christian look; the top one is from Bignor, the bottom one from Frampton. Fig. 101 is from the Orpheus mosaic at Withington. If the Orpheus pavement at Frampton was Christian, the others are likely to have been so too. At least, they symbolise the Harmony of the Universe; they are not “mythological.” These pavements are evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of Romano-British culture.

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. 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.

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+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. 104 is reduced. The fragment (5, Fig. 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. 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.

FIG. 104.
]

The method of dividing up the wall space with strips of plain colour or with “pilasters” was very general. A simpler scheme was to have marginal borders only, and these were frequently of considerable width, made up of many bands and lines of colour. Dadoes were very general, sometimes only a plain band of colour or a horizontal bar running into the margins; at other times they were fully decorated: two examples lately illustrated in _Archæologia_, from Caerwent and Silchester, are really fine work. The latter had a row of “panels,” alternating square and round, set with leaves and ears of corn, on a red ground between dark top and bottom bands.

_Stripes and Margins._—A piece of wall of considerable height was found at Bignor, having a quadrant skirting at the bottom, a plain dark band as a low dado, and the space above divided into panels. At Cirencester a fragment was found which showed a band of fair yellow, edged with margins of white separating spaces of a cool grey-green. At the Society of Antiquaries is a piece of plaster showing fine red and green spaces, divided by a white band and a black line—very simple, but beautiful colour (Fig. 105).

FIG. 105.
]

Of a great number of fragments in our museums one cannot determine if they only represent margins or whether they may have come from vertical strips. A piece of plaster from Silchester shows a broad band of red, then two white lines separated by one of black, and then a surface of grey, except for other thin black lines. A piece of plaster at the Guildhall had a dark green band, probably 3 in. or 4 in. wide, then a strip of rather transparent crimson 1½ in. wide, finished against a yellow line, then an interval of white 1 in. wide, followed by the green again 1¼ in. wide and a yellow line, then 2 in. of white and a single yellow line followed by a white area. This was certainly a margin, and here we get an example of a method of gradating the border into the general field. In 1785 “some large pieces of painted stucco” were found in Lombard Street (_Archæol._ viii.). Drawings made at the time are in the Guildhall library. A piece was banded green and black, with the addition of thin marginal lines. Two of the pieces were from borders having lines with additional touches. One had merely groups of comma-like hooks springing from the line , and the other, little fleur-de-lis forms on a white band edging a bright blue space. These were, I think, coarser variants of the treatment shown in 6, Fig. 104. The margins were sometimes “shaded” like mouldings; there are one or two examples of this treatment at Silchester.

_Pilasters._—In some cases the ornamental vertical strips may not have been contained within pilaster-like forms. A fragment in the British Museum, which has an umbrella-like calyx to a number of springing stalks, may be one of these (Fig. 106). It is on a brown-red ground, and there are some other small fragments with leaves on a similar colour. The cast-shadows make me think that it was independent of a pilaster. The colour and workmanship appear very similar to the festoon of foliage from Southwark, described below; probably such uprights usually upheld festoons. The head rising from a calyx illustrated by Roach Smith came from another similar vertical composition (8, Fig. 104). Two small pieces at the Guildhall represent a similar upright (Fig. 107). Again, in the British Museum is a very simple vertical upright, something like a prolonged ear of corn (9, Fig. 104).

FIG. 106.
]

FIG. 107.
]

FIG. 108.
]

FIG. 109.
]

FIG. 110.
]

Figs. 108, 109, 110, at the British Museum, are from pilasters. Fig. 110 is a restoration of 3, Fig. 104. Fig. 111 is a small fragment at the Society of Antiquaries; this, too, probably came from a vertical stem or a pilaster. Sometimes the pilasters imitated marble.

_Dadoes._—A sketch at the Society of Antiquaries shows the walls of a plain little room found in Leadenhall Street, which had pink margin bands along the skirting and up the angles, and another pink stripe about 2 ft. above the floor. The general surface was white.

FIG. 111.
]

FIG. 112.
]

Other dadoes seem to have been divided up into small plain “panels” or diagonal lattices. At Silchester there is a fragment with a green band, about 1¼ in. wide, crossing another at right angles, having a red line parallel with the green band with a “blob” at the angle. This seems to have represented a dado treatment (Fig. 112). At the British Museum are pieces of plaster painted with narrow red bands on a green ground, apparently parts of a plain lattice pattern. At the Guildhall is a small piece of plaster having a blue band edged by a white line and with a yellow line beyond the red ground, and another at right angles (Fig. 113). This is probably part of a dado; there may have been little subjects or sprigs in the square spaces. This is a notable example of adding “pearling” to the edges of bands or the lines, a favourite method of the painters of Londinium, as several of the other sketches show.

FIG. 113.
]

A large fragment of decoration at the British Museum imitates marble. A circle of green speckled “porphyry” has a margin of red “porphyry,” with figured “marble” of pink-yellow beyond. The circle is defined by scratched lines drawn on the plaster by a compass as a guide for the decorator. This was doubtless part of a dado for which the size of the circle is entirely suitable. Further, fragments of a similar dado were found at Cirencester in position at the foot of a wall. This is described by Buckmann and Newmarch, but they did not recognise the marbling as such. One square panel contained a circle speckled “dark pink and black”; the panels on either band were yellow with wavy markings. Here, again, porphyry and marble were imitated. At Silchester, fragments of marbling have been found, and in the Rochester Museum are many other pieces. Most of these would have been from dadoes. A wall was discovered in January 1922, in the centre of Gracechurch Street, the plaster of which “still retained the lower part of square panels painted in black outline, with a simple ornamentation around, and the painted plaster gave the impression that it had been coloured in imitation of marble.”

Two fragments at the British Museum, which were illustrated by Roach Smith and Wright, are covered with a diaper arranged thus,

× × ×
× × ×

with little flowers and figures in the intervals. These must, I think, have come from a dado. The little figure on one of the pieces is now broken, but a sketch by Fairholt in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows it complete with a level band at the top. It is so engraved by Thomas Wright, and I think that part must have been broken off since it was drawn rather than that the drawing was restored. Wright says that these fragments were from a large building near Crosby Square. This pattern is on a fine red ground.

At the Guildhall Museum is a piece which is fortunately larger than ordinary, and allows for the pattern to be restored (Fig. 114). The ground was covered with circles, small and great, the latter containing sprigs of flowers, all on a dark ground. This, I suppose, was also from a dado. The larger outer circle is made up of curious forms, which comparison shows were rose-petals. A fragment found in the Lombard Street excavations of 1785, of which there is a drawing in the Guildhall Library, shows segment of two circles, one within the other, red on bright blue, and apparently part of a powdering of small double circles. In the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral there used to be preserved, or at least kept, a large piece of a dado having a big rhombus with Amazon-shield forms at the ends, set within a long rectangular panel; this was of good workmanship and possibly of the second century.

FIG. 114.
]

_Foliage._—In the London Museum is a morsel of pilaster, about as big as an open hand, having small leafage painted on a brown-red ground. The leaves are sharp and struck in in a masterly way; it is really beautiful (Fig. 115). The leaves spread from a central stem or line, and it is a part of a suspended festoon, I think, rather than of a growth of foliage. This must be the fragment found in Southwark. “The débris of Roman villas, with pavements, ornamental bowls, and pieces of painted plaster have been found. One of these last, in Mr. Syers Cuming’s museum, has on it a slender stem with green leaves on a dull red field” (Mrs. E. Boger, _Southwark_, 1895. Mr. Cuming was a well-known antiquary).

FIG. 115.
]

In the British Museum are, as said above, two fragments of a scheme of decoration, which seems to have consisted of festoons hanging from slender uprights (6 and 7, Fig. 104). Fig. 116, from the Guildhall, is, I suppose, a variety of vertical stem, but it may be part of a festoon.

_Figures._—Some walls had figures in panels or set singly on the general ground. At the Guildhall is a morsel of plaster containing parts of two small dancing figures, which occupied a panel not more than 8 or 9 in. high (Fig. 117). From the composition it appears that there would have been three figures altogether, filling a square panel (Fig. 118). The central figure is of a darker hue than the others, and apparently the face is male; probably it is a faun with two nymphs. The painting of this is of high competence, and in full Pompeian tradition. The little panel, one of a series, would have been set at the centre of a wall division. Roach Smith illustrated the head of a figure of Mercury on a red ground; this was probably a single figure painted on a general ground and not included in a panel. Evidences for figures of full size have also been found.

FIG. 116.
]

A good foot on a blue ground and a piece of drapery of large scale of fine execution are in the British Museum: these are said to have come from Leadenhall Street (The Basilica?). Wright describes some fragments found at Great Chesterford, Essex. “A considerable variety of rather elegant patterns, among which were some representing portions of the human figure. The most remarkable of the latter was the foot of a female, as large as life, with drapery flowing round it. In one of the larger rooms of the villa at Combe End, in Gloucestershire, the lower part of the wall remained covered with fresco painting, on which were a row of feet, also as large as life, which had belonged to some grand paintings.”

Parts of inscriptions have also been discovered. A morsel was found on Tower Hill of “white wall painting with the letters [large capitals] S V P in reddish colour.” At Woodchester, some fragments “were painted with large capital letters which had formed part of inscriptions” (Wright, p. 195).

_Cast-Shadows._—It was the practice in figure and foliage painting to boldly reinforce the forms with cast-shadows (see a fragment of a figure in Roach Smith’s _Illustrations_, pl. 14). A piece of a foliage tendril or festoon in the Rochester Museum, from the villa at Darenth, has cast-shadows. This is of long, delicate, grey-green olive leaves on a red ground, and the sharp shadow below forces it into prominence. Several of the ornamental patterns found in London were reinforced by shadows. A striking example is the large scroll foliage pattern from Leadenhall Market, where separate shadow lines and touches are laid almost like a secondary pattern. This, I think, from the scale of the work, must have been part of the decorations of the Civil Basilica described in Chapter II.

FIG. 117.
]

Provincial Roman painting is not fine as compared with the great things in either Greek or Gothic art, but we must remember, in comparing it with anything we can obtain to-day, that it was the ordinary journeyman decorator’s work of the time. It is certainly far beyond the standard of common work which we reach to-day; and Roman London, on the testimony of the arts, must have been quite a civilised place. A full study of the fragments in country museums ought to make an interesting subject for a student who is prepared to take up a definite piece of research on the history of art in Britain. Further, suggestions for enlarging the scope of work undertaken by present-day “painters and decorators” might be gathered from these ancient paintings. Our workmen are capable of much better work than is ordinarily demanded of them. Their skill in graining was noticeable; it was the last field where any freedom was left the workmen, and it was probably for that very reason (unconsciously functioning) that architects have tried to kill it. It is our duty to demand free and interesting work. A point to be thought of in regard to the Roman decorations is the character of the designs. These are not laboriously set out, transferred from a full-sized drawing, and painfully “executed”; they are swiftly painted in masterly brush strokes and varied at will for the fun of the thing.

FIG. 118.
]

_Marble Wall-Linings._—In London, at Silchester, and elsewhere, fragments of coloured marbles, and even of porphyries, have been found, which suggest that they were parts of wall-linings, or rather of dadoes. Wright says, of the Great Villa at Woodchester: “Several slices of marble, of different sorts, but chiefly foreign, were also found. These had, perhaps, been employed to encrust the walls. Some of these pieces were not more than a quarter of an inch thick.” At Silchester pieces of porphyry have been found not more than three-sixteenths of an inch thick, and also pieces of fine white marble. At Colchester, fragments of Purbeck and white marble and porphyry have just been dug up. At the British Museum there are many small pieces of marble of various colours, and some of red and green porphyry. A piece of white marble at the British Museum has a shallow edge moulding such as I have frequently seen on dado-slabs in Rome. Such moulding is an excellent way of joining up continuous slab work. The pieces of green porphyry at the British Museum are from the site of East India House (where the Bacchus pavement was found), and they were given by Sir W. Tite in 1884, who, about that time, wrote on the mosaic pavement. These pieces are cut into forms—a part of a circular band and a triangle; they must have belonged to some handsome piece of work, like an Opus Alexandrinum pavement. It looks as if this building, close by the Forum and Basilica, was of special importance—perhaps the governor’s palace.

There must have been skilled marble workers in London. This is proved by the fact that fragments of polished native marbles have been found. Roach Smith, as before said, speaks of “native green marble.” Fragments of Purbeck are common.

At Silchester evidence has been found that mosaics were applied to the walls of a chamber in the Baths; and at Wroxeter a considerable fragment of wall mosaic was found in place many years ago.

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+CHAPTER IX+

LETTERING AND INSCRIPTIONS

_LETTERS._—Fine lettering is the most perfect thing in the art of the Romans. For one thing, it was developed on a field where they were not obsessed with the idea of imitating Greek art; it was their very own, and it was swiftly carried to an apex of perfection in the first century A.D. It is a constant phenomenon on all the fields of Art that it is the _first_ great flow of development which chiefly matters; all things of life and growth are like this, and, as I once heard a fine old Devonshire farmer say, “You can’t have two forenoons in one day.” The Romans, not the Greeks, had the forenoon of the day of their manner of lettering. This manner is clear, sharp, confident; it is like Greek art only in being free.

FIG. 119.—Inscription from the front of a Roman Tomb found at
Westminster Abbey in 1869: now by the entrance to the Chapter House.
MEMORIAE·VALER·AMAN
DINI·VALERI·SVPERVEN
TOR·ET·MARCELLVS·PATRI·FECER·
]

Early inscriptions had for the most part been cut on stone. Then from about 300 B.C. came a time of writing with a pen. Rome took this over from Alexandria and Pergamon, and these _written_ characters became the foundation of a new style of monumental inscription. In pen-written characters the thick and thin strokes make themselves without there being any design in the matter. It seems equally natural in large clear writing to finish off the strokes with a thin touch of the pen to sharpen the forms. This procedure was taken over so exactly into inscriptions cut on stone that, for the most part, it seems these must first have been written on the stone with an implement like a wide brush and cut in afterwards by a mason. The chisel, like the pen, is thin and wide, and thus perfectly fitted to develop the habit of the pen. The cut letters were themselves usually finished by painting. Whoever wishes to design inscriptions must begin on the writing basis, and I should like to advise every student who may read these words to take up the practice of writing capital and small letters with single strokes of the pen, not “touching up” or “painting” the letters, and, above all, not “designing” them with high-waisted bars, swollen loops, little-headed S curves, and other horrors of ignorance and vulgarity, but learning once for all a central standard style. Half an hour a day for one week would teach much to any one who was ready to learn and did not want to do everything by genius.

We have in England a great number of fine Roman inscriptions, and it would be an excellent piece of work to gather a selection into an example-book of illustrations based on corrected rubbings. Even the inscriptions of London carefully studied would be subject-matter for a delightful and valuable essay.

1. The finest London inscription is that on a tomb front in the British Museum (Fig. 120). This must be a first-century work nearly contemporary with the famous inscription of the Trajan column. The letters are large, deep, clearly cut, and of quite perfect form. It is something of a puzzle that such an artist as the author of this tomb should have been working in London only a few years after the Claudian Conquest. The letters of this inscription are still wonderfully sharp; the thick strokes of the big letters are about an inch wide, and the “serifs” are light and free as the stroke of a pen. Notice especially the beautiful curve of S, the square touch at the apex of N and A, and the sharp little triangular division point after the second letter in the last line (Fig. 121. See also Figs. 66 and 67).

FIG. 120.
]

FIG. 121.
]

2. Another very fine inscription is on the tomb front of Valerius at Westminster Abbey. The letters are smaller, the stone is rather decayed on the surface, and it is not seen in a good light. The beauty of the lettering and spacing has consequently hardly been remarked. Here the lines are longer, and the letters seem to follow one another rhythmically, trippingly; it is an extraordinarily vivid and elegant piece of work, which, I think, should be dated in the second century A.D. The letters A M and N have cross touches at the apex of the angles, and the stops are little triangles as in the inscription before described. Here it can just be seen that lines were ruled (scored) on the stone as guides for ranging the letters (Figs. 119 and 122).

FIG. 122.
]

3. In the London Museum is a small tablet of white marble, which has similar lines, lettering and stops, and must be nearly of the same age. I give in Fig. 123 a very rough sketch of this excellent little slab. I have felt some doubt as to whether this was a London antiquity indeed, but the many resemblances to other inscriptions have fully convinced me that it is.

4. At the Guildhall there is another small slab, having only a few letters, but these of fine early style (Fig. 124). Both these little tablets and others probably were set on the wall of some burial chamber of the Columbarium type.

FIG. 123.
]

FIG. 124.
]

FIG. 125.
]

5. Another inscription of much the same character, but in smaller letters, is that on the hexagonal pedestal in the Guildhall Museum, of which a sketch was given in an earlier part. This provides an example of a group of tied letters (Fig. 125). The writers of Roman inscriptions allowed themselves much freedom in contracting words, in setting a small letter within a big one, as in Fig. 119, and in combining two or three letters together. In Fig. 126 I have noted one or two other examples not all from London.

FIG. 126.
]

6. In a fragment of inscription from Greenwich Park at the British Museum, the letters were much compressed, and many of them were linked together (Fig. 127).

FIG. 127.
]

It is difficult to draw out any general rules of form and spacing; generally o and c were very round in form, N of square proportion, and M wider than a square. The round letters were usually thickened, not where the curves would touch vertical tangents, but a little under and over, just as is natural in writing the letters. The loops of D and R do not become horizontal at top and bottom, but bend freely. A, N and M usually have square terminations at the upper angles. Initial letters are not larger than the rest.

FIG. 128.
]

FIG. 129.
]

One or two examples of rapid cursive writing have been preserved on bricks and tiles. Fig. 128 gives some letters of interesting form from a tile at the Guildhall. The A, G and M are on the way to be transformed into—a, g and m; apparently the hook of the “a” had its origin in the overlapping termination at the apex in the monumental inscriptions. Fig. 129 is from a still more rapid scribble; L, T and E here approach our modern handwriting forms. These examples are enough to show how the more cursive writing styles and our own handwriting have been developed from the Roman capitals.

Roman books and correspondence were written in such hands, and Dr. Haverfield has pointed out, as such scribblings on tiles were obviously in many cases by labourers in the brickfields, it follows that the common people in British towns had come to talk Latin. Dr. Haverfield went on to question whether town workmen even _spoke_ Celtic. “Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language. No such scrawl has been found in Britain. This total absence of Celtic cannot be mere accident” (_Romanization_). This argument overlooks a probability that Latin was a _written_ language, while Celtic was not. We hardly realise our direct and full classical inheritance, and the fact that Londinium was a Roman city for three and a half centuries. Here the Latin Pantheon must have been completely absorbed into the common texture of traditional thought; here boys would have carried texts of Virgil in their satchels, and here, again, the story of the Gospel must have been brought in its first westward expansion.

_Inscriptions._—In the notes which follow, I am more than ever off my proper ground, and, moreover, they are likely to be very dreary to any one who does not feel the romance of early London and Britain through all the dryasdust detail in which we have to work.

An important inscription was found in 1850 under St. Nicholas Lane. It was described in the same year (_Gent. Mag._ xi. p. 104): “A large slab with the following Roman inscription in well-cut letters 5 in. or 6 in. in length:

N V M C
P R O V
B R I T A

It is doubtful if the fourth letter in the first line be C or O. The stone is in fine preservation, and others ought to have been discovered, but the excavators were not permitted to turn either to the right or to the left, notwithstanding a gentleman offered to pay any expense.” This must have been Roach Smith, who, as the practical repetition of the phrases given below shows, must have been the author of the note. An MS. letter, which is in my possession, is as follows:

“STROOD, _Wednesday_, P.M.

“MY DEAR FAIRHOLT,—I have given Richards £10 for you.... In the
Guildhall is a fragment of a large inscription from Nicholas
Lane which we should give rather large. It lay just within the
lower door of the Library. The letters are deeply cut and should
be shown clear. Can you see if the stone be _broken_? [Sketch.]
Note if letter 4, line 1, be a C, and please measure it. It is
most important. I suppose it is half the original length.—Yours
sincerely,

“C. R. SMITH.”

FIG. 130.
]

FIG. 131.
]

The stone had disappeared and has never been heard of since. The size was recorded by Birch as 2 ft. 4 in. high, and 3 ft. wide on the face. _V.C.H._ says 6 ft. long, but this is a mistake. Fortunately a careful drawing of the stone was made by Archer, which is preserved in the British Museum (Fig. 130). Archer’s drawing confirms Roach Smith’s reading of C at the end of the first line next a vertical joint. My sketch by Roach Smith seems to be the only other record (Fig. 131). In _Illustrations of Roman London_, he says: “It was found close to a wall, and there is reason to think other stones having the remainder of the inscription were not far off from the one excavated. In the present year (1859), being desirous to compare it with my sketch, I ascertained it was not to be found. The stone was between 2 and 3 ft. in length. The fourth letter in the first line appeared to me when I made the sketch more like a C (which I considered it to be) than it seems to be in the woodcut. From the magnitude of the stone and the character of the letters it is clear that the inscription surmounted the entrance of some public edifice, apparently a temple. It is probably the commencement of a dedication which occupied two or four stones. The wider distance from the top than of the third line from the bottom weighs in favour of the belief that we have only the first quarter. There can be no doubt that NVM should read _Numini_, and that PROV BRITA should be read _Provincia Britannia_; the supposed equal length of the second stone and the number of letters required, render this reading obvious. Seneca and Tacitus concur as to a temple having been erected in Britain to the Emperor Claudius; the latter locates it at Camuludunum. This temple was probably erected soon after the subjugation of the Trinobantes. It may be readily conceived that Londinium possessed some edifice dedicated to that emperor. Although it is impossible to decide positively, we cannot avoid associating the historical evidence with an inscription which must have been of an early period, of a rare class, and almost unique in this country.” This idea that there were formerly four stones is now much strengthened by the fact that a curiously similar temple dedication is illustrated by Espèrandieu (iv. p. 126) from D’Yzeures. This inscription begins _Numinibus Augustorum_ and is on four equal stones with joints meeting at the centre, thus +. Hübner (_C.I.L._ vii. No. 22) gives the boundary to the right of the London stone as a fracture, and restored the inscription with _Num. Caes. et Genio_ in the top line. It is at once apparent that this would not space out properly with the single words of second and third lines. Haverfield leaves out _Genio_ and reads, “To the Divinity of the Emperor and to the Province of Britain.” This, I suppose, might be possible in a contracted inscription, but I am drawn back to Roach Smith’s view, and would venture to suggest the possibility of some such restoration as:

NVM·C|L·AVG·
PROV|INCIA
BRITA|NNIAE
etc. etc.

I am ignorant whether it would be possible to have a dedication from the Province of Britain to Claudius in such a form, but if so it would be a record of great significance. The fourth letter was certainly C, because an O would not have avoided the joint. The letters in the top line were about 6 in. high, and the whole was of fine style. As Hübner says, it is doubtless of the first century. It was certainly affixed to a temple dedicated to an Emperor-divinity. The complete inscription probably occupied four stones.

2. Several brick inscriptions are of special interest, as most of them contain the name London. There are two varieties: (_a_) P.PR.BR. in a label; and (_b_) P.P.BR.LON (Figs. 132 and 133). The former (_a_) has large letters, and they are enclosed in a tablet: it seems of earlier style than the other. Wright says of the second: “The most probable interpretation is _Proprætor Britanniæ Londinii_; this has a peculiar interest as showing that London was the seat of government of the province.” When Wright wrote only a roof tile of variety (_a_) seems to have been known, but now there are several plain tiles at the Guildhall and one at the British Museum which have the same mark. All these are alike in having four notches in their long edges, and one flat side of each is scored over with lines to give better hold for plastering. It seems that these tiles must have been used for lining walls, nails being driven in at the notches; their size is 16 in. by 11 in.

FIG. 132.
]

FIG. 133.
]

The explanation of Hübner adopted in the new British Museum Guide is that P. in (_a_) and (_b_) both “represent the _publicani_ who farmed the taxes (the ‘publicans’ of the Gospels) of the province of Britain in London.”

Nothing is so expert a matter as Latin inscriptions, and it would be absurd for one who is entirely ignorant to pretend to a difference of opinion. I may, however, venture to point out that Hübner himself does not seem very certain, and that the difference of the two forms seems to coincide with the historical fact that earlier Britain was one province and that later it was subdivided. Variety (_a_), I have little doubt, is a second-century inscription (similar labels are found on pigs of lead of the time); while form (_b_) is quite late (probably end of fourth century). The first variety I should like to suggest represents the governor of the undivided province, and the second the subdivided province with its centre at London. If I am not entirely outside the possibilities of the case there is some confirmation of Wright’s view in the fact that other tiles bear the stamps of high authorities; thus a tile at Silchester has the name of the Emperor Nero in a circle, and other tiles are known stamped with the marks of army and navy commands.

3. At the British Museum is a silver ingot (found on the site of the Tower of London), stamped with an inscription given as

EXOFFL
HONORINI

and described thus: “_Ex Of[ficina] Fl[avii ?] Honorini_: found with gold coins of the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius.” The reading FL at the end of the first line is probably adopted because the Emperor Honorius had also the name Flavius; but to my eyes the letters look more like FE. Other similar marks on silver show that we need not expect an emperor’s name. (One in the British Museum reads EX OF PATRICI.) Roach Smith read the London inscription, EX OFFI, and explained the whole “From the workshop of Honorinus.” I may suggest Felix Honorinus.

4. Lying in the grass in front of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, is a large white stone, bearing only T II in what appears to be Roman work and style. It was found near its present site about forty years ago, and was accepted as Roman and explained as a boundary (_terminus_) mark. It may be noted that it lies close to the line of the presumed Roman road along Tothill Street to the river. The nearest parallel I have seen is a stone found near Falkirk, described in Haverfield’s addition to the _C.I.L._ (No. 1264): T III (_turma tertia_).

5. An inscription at the Guildhall

MATR ...
VICINIA-DESVO-RES ........

is, as has been pointed out, a record of the restoration of some edifice or sculpture dedicated to the mother goddesses. The lettering is on the half of the crowning member of a cornice which may have been over a narrow door, and Roach Smith was probably right in assuming the existence of a small temple.

6. A sketch of the inscription found on a mosaic floor near Pudding Lane is preserved at the Society of Antiquaries: it has indications not brought out by printing it in type, and an expert could probably gather more from it than has been made out.

7. The sarcophagus from Clapton at the Guildhall has a much-defaced inscription on the front panel ending apparently, as the catalogue says, with the name MARITIMIVS. Here, again, it is possible that careful examination by experts would bring out further facts.

These inadequate, indeed incompetent, notes on a few selected inscriptions are at least enough to show that the inscriptions of Londinium are worth the attention of properly equipped scholars. A carefully illustrated account of them might be made interesting to all intelligent citizens and help them to get really into their minds an idea of the Roman age in London.

FROM A RELIEF AT BATH.
]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

+CHAPTER X+

THE CRAFTS

IN his account of Roman London, the late Dr. Haverfield writes (_J.R.S._, vol. i.): “The citizens appear to have been Roman or definitely Romanised. Of Roman speech in London we have an isolated but sufficient proof. A tile dug up in Warwick Lane, in 1886, bore an inscription, meaning, apparently, ‘Austalis (Augustalis) goes off on his own every day for a fortnight.’ It seems to follow that some of the bricklayers [makers] of Londinium could write Latin. In the lands ruled by Rome, education was better under the Empire than at any time since until about 1848. The occupations of these Roman or Romanised civilians are unknown to us. Articles manufactured on the Continent were certainly imported. There were also exports of grain, cloth (or wool), and lead, and so forth. We may believe that Roman London devoted its time to financial rather than industrial activity.”

Evidence for the practice of arts in Londinium is really considerable. It was doubtless first of all a port, and probably originated as the seaport of the pre-Roman city of Verulamium; but it became the largest city in Britain, the chief distributing centre and the artistic capital. We are apt to think of Dover, or rather Richborough, as the chief port of the country, but London itself was the largest consumer, and the line of traffic was rather to the mouth of the Rhine than to Boulogne. Londinium was a little Alexandria in the West, and represented Britain as the other did Egypt. The building of such a city called together many able craftsmen—builders, sculptors, painters and mosaic workers. There must also have been shipbuilders and a due proportion of craftsmen-producers, potters, bone- and metal-workers, shoemakers, clothiers and the rest. An enormous quantity of pottery has been found, much of fine imported wares, but the most part varieties of native fabric, of which a large proportion was doubtless made of local clay. The site of St. Paul’s Cathedral was covered with “pot-earth,” and the town potteries seem to have been here.

FIG. 134.
]

_Native Pottery._—In the British Museum are some valuable MS. notes made in the years 1674-79, “by Mr. John Conyers, apothecary, at the ‘White Lion,’ in Fleet Street” (Sloane, 958, 816, 937). In mentioning St. Faith’s Chapel, at St. Paul’s, he says that his father and mother were there married forty-five years since (from 1677). Incidentally, he speaks of two brothers, and of being “at Epping Forest hunting ye hare, but ye frost prevented the scent.” This is a late example of the sporting customs of ancient London. His observations refer to excavations on the site of St. Paul’s and along the Fleet. In regard to the former it appears certain that there were a number of Roman rubbish pits on the site, similar to those recently excavated on the Post Office site. Here also were found pottery-kilns and glass furnaces with pottery, bone and other objects. This seems to have been a manufacturing quarter of the city unoccupied by dwellings. Some sketches show that the pottery kilns were circles of small diameter, having a raised floor supported on a central post, like a table, all of clay and broken stuff roughly formed; the lower stage or fire chamber was thus a ring around the central prop, and in the raised “floor” were several small holes. There must have been an external pit with a stoke-hole, and also a flue from the fire chamber. Four such kilns were found close together, forming a quatrefoil group. The dome of the kiln seems to have been roughly new formed over the pottery to be fired (Fig. 134). Conyers, in the account of finds on the site of St. Paul’s, gives sketches of the kilns found at St. Paul’s with several kinds of pots: “Figures of two kinds of kilns or furnaces of various pots, jugs, etc., of different kinds of earth and pottery. One kiln in loamy ground about 26 ft. deep, near the place where the Mercat-house stood in Oliver’s time. The discovery made in 1677 on digging the foundation of the north-east cross part of St. Paul’s amongst gravel-pits and loam-pits.... Coffins lay over this loamy kiln, the lowest coffins made of chalk, and this supposed to be about Domitian’s time. This kiln was full of ye worst sort of pots, lamps, urns, and not many were saved whole. Four of these [kilns] had been made in the sandy-loam in the fashion of a cross on the ground; the foundations of these left standing 5 ft. from top to bottom, and better, and as many feet in breadth, and had no other matter for its form or building but the outward loam crusted hardish by the heat burning the loam red like brick. The flooring in the middle, supported by and cut out of loam and helped with old-fashioned Roman tiles, sherds, but very few, and such as I have seen used for repositories for urns in ye fashion of little ovens, and they plastered within with a reddish mortar; but here was no mortar, but only ye sandy loam for cement.... A censer or lamp, whitish earth; one great earthen dish; earthen lamp gilded with electrum,” etc. etc.