Glass Author:Alexander Nesbitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Glass In The Roman Empire. The increasing wealth and luxury of Rome which accompanied the establishment of the empire had among their more impor... more »tant effects that of stimulating the manufacture of glass, and this ultimately reached a point of development which in some respects has never been excelled nor even perhaps equalled. It may appear a somewhat exaggerated assertion that glass was used for more purposes and, in one sense, more extensively by the Romans of the imperial period than by ourselves in the present day; but it can be borne out by evidence. It is true that the use of glass for windows was only gradually extending itself at the time when Roman civilization sank under the torrent of German and Hunnish barbarism, and that its employment for optical instruments was only known in a rudimentary stage; but for domestic purposes, for architectural decoration, and for personal ornaments, glass was unquestionably much more used than at the present day. That glass was highly and deservedly esteemed as a material of what we should now call works of vertu is evidenced by the high prices paid for fine samples (for instance, the 6,000 sestertii which Pliny tells us were paid, in the time of Nero, for two small vases), and also by the interest several emperors took in the products of the manufacture; among these we may specially notice Tacitus, a man of letters and a collector, of whom Vopiscus tells us that "vitreorum operositate atque diversitate vehementer est delectatus." The Portland vase in the British museum and the vase at Naples, to mention one kind of glass manufacture alone, show how well deserved was the enthusiasm bestowed upon such objects by the dilettanti of Rome. These and similar vessels, sculptured like cameos, are perhaps the most beauti...« less