DISCOVERED IN IIERTEORDSHIRE.

255 common before the rule of tlie Cscsars, may be shewn from the inscriptions APT AC CeiAXN, with the semicircukn- sigma, and Artas Sidon in Latin, inscriljed on the same vessels, noticed on specimens foimd in Italy, and preserved in the collection of M. Bartoldi, late Prussian consul at Home". It is, indeed, probaljle that glass was not made in Rome itself, but imported from the Tyrian coast and Alexandria. The glass f)f the Sidonian manufacturer Artas resembled the commoner kind, such as the vessel found in the Harpenden sarcophagus. Pliny mentions that in the time of Nero the manufacture of glass had reached Italy, Spain, and Gaul: N. H. xxxvi. 66. The glass urns used among the Romans are generally of a dif- ferent shape, having a globular body with double handles and a conical cover, wdiich is sometimes perforated at the top, like an inverted fimnel, for the pm-pose of pouring liquids over the bones when they had been collected. The glass amphora, discovered in the sarcophagus attributed to Severus Alexander, generally known as the Barberini, or Portland vase, is another })roof of the prevalent use of glass, and of the high state of art to which engraving on glass had been carried ; and it is also an evidence that the most valuable productions of art were by preference deposited with the dead. Among the Celto-Roman population, glass, when employed for sepulchral pm-poses, was generally deposited with the greatest care, the vessel with the bones being enclosed within an urn of earthenw^are of a globular shape, pointed at the base, when there was not wealth or facility for obtain- ing a stone sarcophagus. Such are the terra cotta globes found at Tancarville in Normandy, and now preserved in the museum of the Department at Rouen". A similar globe w^as found at Hemel Hempstead, in Essex, enclosing a fictile urn and bones p, and others were discovered in the Roman l)urying-grounds at Deveril-street " Tolkcin Vcrzeich der Geschin. Stciiie. p. 257. Ik'i-lin. I' Arclia'ol., vol. xxvii. p. l-'i I, ■'>. " Caiiinoiil, Coins dc . li.. PI. xxviii.