Part 24

On these words of Pliny a great dispute has arisen. Some think that onyx is the material described, a conjecture founded on the variety of colors which that stone presents. To this it is objected, that onyx and murrha, onyx vases and murrhine vases are alike mentioned by Latin writers, and never with any hint as to their identity; nay, there is a passage in which Heliogabalus is said to have onyx and murrhine vases in constant use. Others, as we have said, think that they were variegated glass; others that they were the true Chinese porcelain, a conjecture in some degree strengthened by a line of Propertius:

"Murrheaq. in Parthis pocula cocta focis."

At the same time this quotation is not so conclusive as it might have been, since Pliny speaks of murrha as "hardened in the earth by heat," and the poet may only have meant the same thing, though the expression in that case would be somewhat strained. To us, Pliny's description appears to clearly point to some opaline substance; the precious opal has never in modern times been found in masses approaching to the size necessary to make vessels such as we have spoken of. The question is not likely to be settled, and it is not improbable that the material of these murrhine vases is entirely unknown to us, as the quarries of many marbles used by the ancients have hitherto eluded our research, and the marbles themselves are only known by their recurrence among ancient buildings.

We may here notice one or two facts connected with glass, which show that the ancients were on the verge of making one or two very important discoveries in physical science. They were acquainted with the power of transparent spherical bodies to produce heat by the transmission of light, though not with the manner in which that heat was generated by the concentration of the solar rays. Pliny mentions the fact that hollow glass balls filled with water would, when held opposite to the sun, grow hot enough to burn any cloth they touched; but the turn of his expression evidently leads to the conclusion that he believed the heat to become accumulated in the glass itself, not merely to be transmitted through it. Seneca speaks of similar glass balls, which magnified minute objects to the view. Nay, he had nearly stumbled on a more remarkable discovery, the composition of light, for he mentions the possibility of producing an artificial rainbow by the use of an angular glass rod. At a far earlier period Aristophanes speaks of "a transparent substance used to light fires with," usually translated glass. The passage is curious, as it shows a perfect acquaintance with the use of the burning glass.

With the laws of reflection the ancients, as we know from the performances ascribed to Archimedes, were well acquainted. It is singular that being in possession of such remarkable facts connected with refraction, they should never have proceeded to investigate the laws by which it is governed.

[Illustration: GLASS VESSELS (_of Pompeii_).]

The first object figured _h_, in the annexed block, is a glass funnel, _infundibulum_; _g_, is described as a wine-strainer, but the method of its use is not altogether clear. The bottom is slightly concave, and pierced with holes. It is supposed to have been used as a sort of tap, the larger part being placed within the barrel, and the wine drawn off through the neck or spout, which is broken. Fig. _n_, is a wine-taster, something on the principle of a siphon. It is hollow, and the air being exhausted by the mouth at the small end, the liquid to be tasted was drawn up into the cavity. _a_ and _b_, wine-jars; _c_, two small wine-jars in a glass casket; _d_, _e_, _f_ and _q_, goblets or drinking-glasses of toned and beautiful colored glass; _i_ and _m_, glass dishes, the first with a saucer.

Another sort of glass strainer, of which there are several in the Neapolitan Museum, is made of bronze, pierced in elegant and intricate patterns as seen on page 84. The Romans used strainers filled with snow to cool their wines, and such may have been the destination of the one here represented. These were called _cola vinaria_, or _nivaria_. The poor used a linen cloth for the same purpose.

With respect to the details of dress, the excavations, whether at Pompeii or Herculaneum, enable us to clear up no difficulties, and to add little to that which is already known on this subject. Still a short notice of the principal articles of dress, and explanation of their Latin names, may be expedient for the full understanding of some parts of our subject. The male costume will detain us a very short time.

The proper Roman dress, for it would be tiresome and unprofitable to enter upon the variety of garments introduced in later times from foreign nations, consisted merely of the toga and tunica, the latter being itself an innovation on the simple and hardy habit of ancient times. It was a woolen vest, for it was late before the use of linen was introduced, reaching to the knees, and at first made without sleeves, which were considered effeminate; but, as luxury crept in, not only were sleeves used, but the number of tunics was increased to three or four. The toga was an ample semi-circular garment, also without sleeves. It is described as having an opening large enough to admit the head and the right arm and shoulder, which were left exposed, having a sort of lappet, or flap (lacinia), which was brought under the right arm and thrown over the left shoulder, forming the _sinus_, or bosom, the deep folds of which served as a sort of pocket. This is the common description, which, we confess, conveys no very clear notion of the construction or appearance of the dress. The left arm was entirely covered, or if exposed, it was by gathering up the lower edge of the ample garment.

The female dress consisted of one or more tunics, with an upper garment, called _stola_, which superseded the toga, originally worn by women as well as men. The stola is said to have been a more ample and ornamented sort of tunic. The tunic worn by women does not seem to have differed from that worn by men, except that it reached to the feet. Above the stola, women wore a mantle called palla or pallium. This is said to have been thrown across the shoulders, the right end being gathered up and thrown over the left shoulder, leaving nothing but the right hand visible.

[Illustration: CUPS AND METALS.]

Some minute speculations relative to one article in female dress have been based on a statue from Herculaneum, in which a Neapolitan antiquary thinks that he has discovered the nature and construction of that compound garment called the tunico-pallium, in which the appearance and uses of the tunic and mantle were united. It is the statue of a woman employed in buckling her dress over the right shoulder, having already fastened it on the left, in such a manner as to leave the arm bare.

Numerous articles of female ornament have been found, of which we have collected a few into one block. They are drawn of the same size as the originals. The lower corners of the cut represent ear-rings, seen in front and sideways. It is a portion of a plain gold spheroid, very thick, with a metal hook at the back to pass through the ear. The next is of simpler construction, having pearl pendants. Both these patterns seem to have been very common. The upper right-hand corner of the cut represents a breast-pin, attached to a Bacchanalian figure, with a patera in one hand and a glass in the other. He is provided with bat's wings, and two belts, or bands of grapes, pass across his body. The bat's wings symbolize the drowsiness consequent upon hard drinking. There are also represented gold rings with serpent's heads, the eyes of which are inlaid with beautiful stones and diamonds; also bracelets of this pattern were very common.

[Illustration: GOLD JEWELRY (_From Pompeii_)]

A beautiful gold necklace was also found, of which a cut is represented in the above plate. It was very elaborate and exquisite. Ornamental safety-pins were also found, as shown in following cuts. Lockets were also found, indicating religious subjects of later date.

Small toilet-boxes, made of wood or ivory, were also numerous; and, like the vases, of many different forms; and some, which contained cosmetics of divers kinds, served to deck the dressing table, or a lady's boudoir. They were carved in various ways, and loaded with ornamental devices in relief; sometimes representing the favorite lotus flower, with its buds and stalks, a goose, gazelle, fox, or other animal. Many were of considerable length, terminating in a hollow shell, not unlike a spoon in shape and depth, covered with a lid turning on a pin; and to this, which may properly be styled the box, the remaining part was merely an accessory, intended for ornament, or serving as a handle.

[Illustration: HEAVY GOLD PINS.]

They were generally of sycamore wood, sometimes of tamarisk, or of acacia; and occasionally ivory, and inlaid work, were substituted for wood. To many, a handle of less disproportionate length was attached, representing the usual lotus flower, a figure, a Typhonian monster, an animal, a bird, a fish, or a reptile; and the box itself, whether covered with a lid or open, was in character with the remaining part. Some shallow ones were probably intended to contain small portions of ointment, taken from a large vase at the time it was wanted, or for other purposes connected with the toilet, where greater depth was not required; and in many instances they rather resembled spoons than boxes.

[Illustration: BROOCHES INSET WITH STONE.]

Many were made in the form of a royal oval, with and without a handle; and the body of a wooden fish was scooped out, and closed with a cover imitating the scales, to deceive the eye by the appearance of a solid mass. Sometimes a goose was represented, ready for table, or swimming on the water, and pluming itself; the head being the handle of a box formed of its hollow body; some consisted of an open part or cup, attached to a covered box; others of different shapes offered the usual variety of fancy devices, and some were without covers, which may come under the denomination of saucers. Others bore the precise form and character of a box, being deeper and more capacious; and these were probably used for holding trinkets, or occasionally as repositories for the small pots of ointment, or scented oils, and bottles containing the collyrium, which women applied to their eyes.

Some were divided into separate compartments, covered by a common lid, either sliding in a groove, or turning on a pin at one end; and many of still larger dimensions sufficed to contain a mirror, combs, and, perhaps, even some articles of dress.

These boxes were frequently of costly materials, veneered with rare woods, or made of ebony, inlaid with ivory, painted with various devices, or stained to imitate materials of a valuable nature; and the mode of fastening the lid, and the curious substitute for a hinge given to some of them, show the former was entirely removed, and that the box remained open, while used.

Knobs of ebony, or other hard wood, were very common. They were covered with great care, and inlaid with ivory and silver.

[Illustration: SAFETY TOGA PINS.]

Some boxes were made with a pointed summit, divided into two parts, one of which alone opened, turning on small pivots at the base, and the two ends of the box resembled in form the gable ends, as the top, the shelving roof, of a house. The sides were, as usual, secured by glue and nails, generally of wood, and dove-tailed, a method of joining adopted in Egypt at the most remote period; but the description of these belongs more properly to cabinet work, as those employed for holding the combs, and similar objects, to the toilet.

Some vases have been found in boxes, made of wicker-work, closed with stoppers of wood, reed, or other materials, supposed to belong either to a lady's toilet or to a medical man; one of which, now in the Berlin Museum, has been already noticed.

[Page Decoration]

FURNITURE.

In the furniture of the houses the Egyptians displayed considerable taste; and there, as elsewhere, they studiously avoided too much regularity, justly considering that its monotonous effect fatigued the eye. They preferred variety both in the arrangement of the rooms and in the character of their furniture, and neither the windows, doors, nor wings of the house, exactly corresponded with each other. An Egyptian would, therefore, have been more pleased with the form of our Elizabethan, than of the box-shaped rooms of later times.

In their mode of sitting on chairs they resembled the modern Europeans rather than Asiatics, neither using, like the latter, soft _divans_, nor sitting cross-legged on carpets. Nor did they recline at meals, as the Romans, on a _triclinium_, though couches and ottomans formed part of the furniture of an Egyptian. When Joseph entertained his brethren, he ordered them to _sit_ according to their ages. Egyptians sometimes sat cross-legged on the ground, on mats and carpets, or knelt on one or both knees; these were rather the customs for certain occasions, and of the poorer classes. To sit on their heels was also customary as a token of respect in the presence of a superior, as in modern Egypt; and when a priest bore a shrine before the deity he assumed this position of humility; a still greater respect being shown by prostration, or by kneeling and kissing the ground. But the house of a wealthy person was always furnished with chairs and couches. Stools and low seats were also used, the seat being only from 8 to 14 inches high, and of wood, or interlaced with thongs; these, however, may be considered equivalent to our rush-bottomed chairs, and probably belonged to persons of humbler means. They varied in their quality, and some were inlaid with ivory and various woods.

Those most common in the houses of the rich were the single and double chair (answering to the Greek _thronos_ and _diphros_), the latter sometimes kept as a family seat, and occupied by the master and mistress of the house, or a married couple. It was not, however, always reserved exclusively for them, nor did they invariably occupy the same seat; they sometimes sat like their guests on separate chairs, and a _diphros_ was occasionally offered to visitors, both men and women.

Many of the fauteuils were of the most elegant form. They were made of ebony and other rare woods, inlaid with ivory, and very similar to some now used in Europe. The legs were mostly in imitation of those of an animal; and lions' heads, or the entire body, formed the arms of large fauteuils, as in the throne of Solomon (I Kings, x. 19). Some, again, had folding legs, like our camp-stools; the seat was often slightly concave; and those in the royal palace were ornamented with the figures of captives, or emblems of dominion over Egypt and other countries. The back was light and strong, and consisted of a single set of upright and cross bars, or of a frame receding gradually and terminating at its summit in a graceful curve, supported from without by perpendicular bars; and over this was thrown a handsome pillow of colored cotton, painted leather, or gold and silver tissue, like the beds at the feast of Abasuerus, mentioned in Esther, or like the feathered cushions covered with stuffs and embroidered with silk and threads of gold in the palace of Scaurus.

Seats on the principle of our camp-stools seem to have been much in vogue. They were furnished with a cushion, or were covered with the skin of a leopard, or some other animal, which was removed when the seat was folded up; and it was not unusual to make even head-stools, or wooden pillows on the same principle. They were also adorned in various ways, bound with metal plates, and inlaid with ivory, or foreign woods; and the wood of common chairs was often painted to resemble that of a rarer and more valuable kind.

The seats of chairs were frequently of leather, painted with flowers and fancy devices; of interlaced work made of string or thongs, carefully and neatly arranged, which, like our Indian cane chairs, were particularly adapted for a hot climate; but over this they occasionally placed a leather cushion, painted in the manner already mentioned.

The forms of the chairs varied very much; the larger ones generally had light backs, and some few had arms. They were mostly about the height of those now used in Europe, the seat nearly in a line with the bend of the knee; but some were very low, and others offered that variety of position which we seek in the kangaroo chairs of our own drawing-room. The ordinary fashion of the legs was in imitation of those of some wild animal, as the lion or the goat, but more usually the former, the foot raised and supported on a short pin; and, what is remarkable, the skill of their cabinet-makers, even before the time of Joseph, had already done away with the necessity of uniting the legs with bars. Stools, however, and more rarely chairs, were occasionally made with these strengthening members, as is still the case in our own country; but the drawing-room fauteuil and couch were not disfigured by so unseemly and so unskillful a support.

The stools used in the saloon were of the same style and elegance as the chairs, frequently differing from them only in the absence of a back; and those of more delicate workmanship were made of ebony, and inlaid, as already stated, with ivory or rare woods. Some of an ordinary kind had solid sides, and were generally very low; and others, with three legs, belonged to persons of inferior rank.

The ottomans were simple square sofas, without backs, raised from the ground nearly to the same level as the chairs. The upper part was of leather, or a cotton stuff, richly colored, like the cushions of the fauteuils; the base was of wood painted with various devices; and those in the royal palace were ornamented with the figures of captives, the conquest of whose country was designated by their having this humiliating position. The same idea gave them a place on the soles of sandals, on the footstools of a royal throne, and on the walls of the palace at Medeenet Haboo, in Thebes, where their heads support some of the ornamental details of the building.

Footstools also constituted part of the furniture of the sitting-room; they were made with solid or open sides, covered at the top with leather or interlaced work, and varied in height according to circumstances, some being of the usual size now adopted by us, others of inconsiderable thickness, and rather resembling a small rug. Carpets, indeed, were a very early invention, and they are often represented sitting upon them, as well as on mats, which are commonly used in their sitting-rooms, as at the present day, and remnants of them have been found in the Theban tombs.

Their couches evinced no less taste than the fauteuils. They were of wood, with one end raised, and receding in a graceful curve; and the feet, as in many of the chairs, already described, were fashioned to resemble those of some wild animal.

Egyptian tables were round, square, or oblong; the former were generally used during their repasts, and consisted of a circular flat summit, supported like the _monopodium_ of the Romans, on a single shaft, or leg, in the centre, or by the figure of a man, intended to represent a captive. Large tables had usually three or four legs, but some were made with solid sides; and though generally of wood, many were of metal or stone; and they varied in size, according to the purposes for which they were intended.

Of the furniture of their bed-rooms we know little or nothing; but that they universally employed the wooden pillow above alluded to is evident, though Porphyry would lead us to suppose its use was confined to the priests, when, in noticing their mode of life, he mentions a half cylinder of well polished wood "sufficing to support their head," as an instance of their simplicity and self-denial. For the rich they were made of Oriental alabaster, with an elegant grooved or fluted shaft, ornamented with hieroglyphics, carved in intaglio, of sycamore, tamarisk, and other woods of the country; the poor classes being contented with a cheaper sort, of pottery or stone. Porphyry mentions a kind of wicker bedstead of _palm branches_, hence called _bais_, evidently the species of framework called _kaffass_, still employed by the modern Egyptians as a support to the _divans_ of sitting rooms, and to their beds. Wooden, and perhaps also bronze, bedsteads (like the iron one of Og, King of Bashan), were used by the wealthier classes of the ancient Egyptians; and it is at least probable that the couches they slept upon were as elegant as those on which their bodies reposed after death; and the more so, as these last, in their general style, are very similar to the furniture of the sitting-room.

The oldest specimen of a bedstead is that mentioned by Homer as joined together by Odysseus in his own house. He had cut off the stem of an olive-tree a few feet from the ground, and joined to it the boards of the bed, so that the trunk supported the bed at the head. It therefore was immovable. The antique bed must be considered as the prolongation of the diphros. The cross-legged diphros prolonged became the folding bed; that with perpendicular legs the couch. The former could easily be moved and replaced; they are perhaps identical with the beds frequently mentioned in the "Odyssey," which were put into the outer hall for guests. One of them is shown as the notorious bed of Prokrustes in a picture on a vase. The diphros corresponds to the couch resting on four legs, at first without head and foot-board, which were afterwards added at both ends. By the further addition of a back on one of the long sides, it became what we now call a _chaise longue_ or sofa. This sleeping kline was no doubt essentially the same as that used at meals. The materials were, besides the ordinary woods, maple or box, either massive or veneered. The legs and backs, and other parts not covered by the bed clothes, were carefully worked. Sometimes the legs are neatly carved or turned, sometimes the frames are inlaid with gold, silver, and ivory, as is testified in the "Odyssey," and elsewhere.