Throughout, however, the Roman empire, small figures of terra cotta called siuilla or sigiUaria, used for votive or religious purposes, for presents on the festival of Saturnalia, some representing deities, others personages of common life, or grotesque figures like modern toys, which were also called crepundia, were sometimes made of terra cotta, by particular potters, triyillaria or signarii. A pottery for the manufacture of these figures with moulds has been lately found at Moulins, and in the valley of Allier ; others of the Gaulish goddess Nehallenia have been found at Autun, Dijou, and a few in England. They are generally of a white or pipe clay, and rarely have a potter's name. Terra cotta was also employed for miscellaneous uses,. such as the crucibles and moulds of the false coiner, and great quantities of lamps, lucernce, were made of this material. These were stamped out of moulds, forme, by potters called lucernarii ; the body is generally of a circular shape, with one or more projecting nozzles, and the handles in shape of Tunes, busts of Scmpis, antefixal ornameuts or plain rings. They are generally only a few inches long, and slightly concave on the upper surface, on which are stamped, in bas-relief, deities, animals, fables, subjects taken from the poets, the games of the circus, and amusements of the streets. At a later period in the empire, the Jews or Christians used as a device the golden candlestick, the monogram of Christ, and other religious devices. These lamps have generally on their base letters stamped in, either the name of the potter, and potteries, or the place and date. The principal lamp-makers lived at. the Porta Trigemina, situated at the foot of the Aventine, and towards the Tiber, where Cacus the robber giant had dwelt, close to the Salt Springs or Salt Pans, and on the Vatican. The trade was active, and the lamps appear to have been imported throughout the empire. Besides the normal type, some fancy shapes occur, such as a pair of feet and a gladiator's helmet. Lamps were in great use for household purposes, illuminations, funerals, and votive efl'erings. Notwithstanding the introduction of metallic vases in the latter days of the Republic, the Romans, especially the poorer classes, made various kinds of earthenware vases for all household and some religious purposes even during the Empire. Large casks, dolia, made of a coarse red, white, or yellow clay, and 7 or 8 feet high, hooped with lead, were made by particular makers called doliarii, and used as vats for holding wine ; they were made in the same manner as the pithoi, and they gave the name of opus dollar° to earthenware. The Roman potters used the wheel and moulds for the production of other vases, and kilns of potters have been discovered in Germany, France, and Britain with vases, remains of materials, and tools. The principal vases are the nnglazed yellow used for amphorae, lagzeme, bottles, a flat vase with a spout called the mortarium, and many small pater.° ; cups and bowls, bottles, cadi, gutti, ollm or jars, cups, calices, mortars, and sometimes =phone were often made of a pale red ware, the paste mixed with a small quartz pebble ; a kind of gray ware made of a sandy loam, resembling stone ware, was used for mortaria and amphorze ; small plates, patella', cups, pocula, or ciboria, stands for vases, or candlesticks, cornice, were often made of unglazed black, ornamented with engine turned, or thorny, or scaly ornaments ; this ware is of late period, and probably succeeded the other ware about the 3rd century A.D.; a few vases of small size for the table have been found of a brown ware, and a class of small vases with egg-shaped bodies and tall necks—the ancient phials.
At the close of the Greek vase art, the paintings bad entirely disappeared; the vases entirely coloured black, being ornamented with subjects on relief in imitation of relief ornaments, trustee or embkmata, of metallic vases, and vases of this class appear to have been made in black and red glazed ware at Cuma, Capua, and Aretium. This ware, the finest produced by the Roman potteries, and apparently commencing about the 1st century ice., was called Samian by Plautus, and the writers of the close of the Republic, but Campanian by Horace and writers of the Empire. Vases of this class have indeed been found in the Greek islands, and may have thenco been imported originally to Rome, but the chief site of the fabric was in Aretiurn, whence it is frequently called Aretinc ware, It is dis tinguished by its close compact paste of a bright red coralline colour, breaking with a fracture like sealing wax, and glazed externally with a mere polish or very thin siliceous glaze. . The vases are of small size chiefly bowls, trance, cups, calicos, bottles, gutti, flat, circular, or oval dishes, tureens, either plain and turned on the wheel, or else ornamented externally with subjects in bas-relief, and made from moulds. Theso
moulds;were made of a hard compact and pale red clay, and the subjects were produced from moveable types' of hard clay set up into composi tions and stamped on the moulds. The subjects are taken from Roman works of art and mythology, the principal buildings and statues of Rome, gladiators, amusements of the circus, and erotic scenes, or arabesque and floral ornaments. The subjects are arranged in one or more friezes round the vase, and fill up the external surface. These vases are impressed with the names of above 500 potters, some of Quills!' origin, showing that the red ware was manufactured in France and Germany. In the plain vases the names are stamped on the inside of the bottom, while on the vases with bas-reliefs on tesserfe with letters in relief ; the names of the potters are preceded or followed by the expressions 5I (anu) by the hand, OF (fieina) the establishment, s (eeit) he made. The majority are slaves distinguished by their single names, but the single names of freedmen or free proprietors appear on some specimens. The potters were called figuli or figulinarii, as makers of vases dictiliarii, and raseularii and ampullarii or pot makers. The merchants who dealt in the ware were called negotiatores eras crotarice : traces of their manufactories and shops have been found at Nancy, Paris, Nismea, Lyons; Clermont, near Bourdeaux, Itheinzabern, Ileiligenberg, and Mayence ; while the ware has been found as far east as the Crimea, and west, as the W. coast of England, and distributed throughout Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, the Islands of the fEgean and Archipelago, and the confines of the Roman empire. There is a great difference in the ware ; that of the 1st century n.c, from the potteries of Campania being of finer earth and glaze, ornamented with relief sometimes delicately executed. In Northern Europe, that made under the first Cmsars is of the finest colour, brightest glaze, hardest paste, and best executed ornaments. Under Vespasian and his sons the paste is good, but no longer fine, and the vases resemble imitations of the earlier ware. At the time of the Antonines, A.°. 120, true Samian is no longer found, the shapes are still good, but tho fracture and glaze are coarse, and coloured with red lead, or sulphate of iron, and an inferior glaze. After the age of the Antonines, the - decadence is still greeter, the colour and glaze of the false Sarni= much worse. From some of the figures the art appears to have been con tinued to the 4th century A.D. Some of theater vases are decorated with relief ornaments 4 barbetine, produced by squeezing the clay when moist out of • pipe or spoon, and modelling it into the required shape with a tool. Vases of this ware have also patterns cut with a sharp tool out of the body of the vase, in imitation of the diatretuin or engraving on glue& The principal aites in Italy for celebrated vases under the Empire were Aretium, Allifer in Samniuru, celebrated for its cups, l'ollentia, Surrentum, Modena and Rhegium, besides those already mentioned. A few vases of lustrous black ware were made by the Romans, but the red Samian or Roman ware seems to have been succeeded by a glazed black ware, probably as early as the 3rd century in Gaul and Britain, made by the native potters. These vases are of various pastes, made by the wheel, but often decorated with subjects Gartatine, consisting of gladiators or hunting scenes and ornaments punctured in or incised. The principal sites of the fabric were at Castor and the Upchurch marshes near Sheerness, and at Crockhill in the New Forest ; the paste of this last is made of a dark gray clay, and the surface covered with an alkaline maroon glaze ; the Castor ware was made of a gray clay, and the external colour is supposed to have been produced by condensing the smoke of the kiln on the vases while baking; the Upchurch ware is made of the London clay with an external black glaze or polish, that found at Crockhill was made of a local blue clay covered with an alkaline maroon glaze. Small vases, principally drinking cups, with corrugated sides, were made of this ware. Similar wares, but occasionally impressed with the names of potters in relief, have been found in France and Germany ; and a black glazed ware with • red paste, having in slip of pipe clay such expressions as AVE hail, turas drink, VA VINVM give wine, in the shape of jugs and bottles, and perhaps as late as the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. Besides these imperfectly glazed vases of a tender lustrous pottery, the fabric of an enamelled or glazed terra cotta, covered with a thick siliceous glaze, in some instances produced by hand, seems to have been handed down in Egypt, and the products in the shape of lamps and jugs imported from Alexandria throughout the Roman world, a fact important to be remembered in the history of the revival of glazed warn in Europe.