with every variety of physical deformity. The Emperor Augustus, indeed, with his usual good sense, refused to follow such a degrading fashion. We are told by Suetonius that he turned with loathing from pigmies and monstrosities, regarding them as freaks of nature and of evil omen.1 Roman ladies were, however, specially fond of these dwarfs, whose value, as Quintilian remarks, varied according to the extent of their deformity.2

(442) Cf. Espérandieu, Signacula Medicorum Oculariorum; Castillo y Quartiellers, Die Augenheilkunde in der Römerzeit; (446) Papers of the Brit. School at Rome, 1907, pp. 279–282; Lancet, Dec. 22, 1906.

See on ancient medicine and surgery generally, Smith, Dict. of Ant.3, s.v. Medicina. Medicus; Daremberg et Saglio, s.v. Chirurgia, Medicus; Milne, Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times; Hamilton, Incubation; Deneffe, Étude sur la trousse d'un chirurgien gallo-romain du IIIe siècle (found near Paris, 1880); Camb. Companion to Greek Stud., pp. 558-565.

XVII.-PAINTING.

(Table-Case J.)

The art of painting in Roman times is illustrated by a series of ancient colours, pestles and mortars, some paintings on wood, one, painted by the encaustic process, enclosed in its ancient wooden frame. The colours, as may be seen, were kept in a dry condition, and had to be pounded with pestle and mortar before they were mixed for the use of the artist. A good number of ancient colours are shown here, the blue (silicate of copper) being particularly prominent. The six saucers (No. 447), found together in a tomb of the Roman period at Hawara, Egypt, contain watercolour paints. These are dark red (oxide of iron), yellow (ochre, oxide of iron), white (sulphate of lime), pink (organic colour, probably madder, in sulphate of lime), blue (glass coloured by copper), red (oxide of lead). The saucers were found piled by the side of the owner's body. Pestles and mortars for pounding the colours are shown in the Case. A favourite form of pestle is that which resembles a bent leg or thumb, such as the one from Rhodes (No. 448), inscribed with what is probably the owner's name. Near it is the terracotta figure of a dwarf (No. 449), seated (apparently in a violent passion) before a pestle and mortar. We may imagine that he is a slave set to mix his master's colours. 1 Suet., Aug. 83. 2 Inst. Or. ii. 5, 11.

The methods of painting illustrated here are two, viz., painting on a dry ground in water - colours, and what is known as "encaustic" painting. For the first, water-colours were used, and the ground material was generally a thin piece of wood, whitened to receive the colours. Egypt has furnished many examples of this kind of painting. An excellent one is the portrait of a woman from the Fayum, wearing a fillet (No. 450). This no doubt comes from a mummy of the Roman period, such as the one exhibited in Case 72 next the entrance to the Gold Room Corridor, which has a similar painted portrait (in encaustic, however) placed over the face. Other water-colour paintings of Roman date from Egypt are shown in Case J, such as the figures of Fortune and Venus painted in several colours on a red ground (No. 451), and the fragmentary figure (No. 452), wearing a jewel of gold and pearls, and inscribed with the name of Sarapis (CAPANI). The encaustic process was that employed in the case of the framed portrait (No. 452*), found at Hawara in Egypt. The frame is carefully made, the sides being joined by tenons and mortises. There is a groove for a glass covering, and the cord by which it was suspended still remains. The portrait was painted in wax, by a process which can hardly have been other than that called "encaustic" by Pliny.' The nature of this process has been much disputed, but probably the colours were ground in with the wax, which was fused by the heat of the sun or artificial means, and then laid on by the brush. A stump (cestrum) was also sometimes employed. Probably a box divided into compartments was used for holding these wax-colours in their fluid state. Such a receptacle may perhaps be recognized in the long terracotta vessel, which has a groove in the middle for a brush (No. 453).

(447) Petrie, Hawara, p. 11; (452*) ibid., p. 10. For ancient painting generally, see Smith, Dict. of Ant.,3 s.v. Pictura; Daremberg et Saglio, s.v. Pictura.

XVIII.-EDUCATION, TOYS AND GAMES.

(Table-Case J.)

Education. Case J contains several objects illustrating the way in which Greek and Roman children were introduced to what must have been the rather difficult art of reading. For the fact

1 Plin., H.N. xxxv. 122, 149.

that the words were run one into the other in the manuscript must have made the task a somewhat harder one than it is with us.

A pretty Greek terracotta group of about the third century B.C. (No. 454; fig. 192, right) shows a kindly old schoolmaster seated and teaching a boy who stands by his side to read from a roll. The ancient book differed from our own in taking the form of a roll. The reader would first unroll the beginning, and then, as he went on, roll up the part he had finished, making thus a double roll, as it were, of the part read and the part unread. Another terracotta group (No. 455; fig. 192, left) gives us a glimpse of a

Greek writing lesson. We may suppose that the writing materials are a wax-coated tablet and a pointed instrument called by the Romans a stilus. Papyrus was too expensive a material to be given to children to spoil with their first attempts at writing. good example of the stilus is the one in ivory here figured, found in a tomb of the fifth century B.C. at Eretria in Euboea (No. 456; fig. 193). The broad flat end enabled the writer to erase what he had written, so that we find the Romans using the phrase "to turn the pen" (vertere stilum) in the sense of "to erase." Numerous

1 Found with the vase E 775 (Cat. of Vases, III.).

stili in bronze are shown in the Case, and some are illustrated in fig. 194. The fifth example from the top in the illustration is in silver bound with gold wire, probably from France and of late Roman date. The wax-tablets used with these pens are exhibited here, one of them in particular (No. 457) being an interesting survival from ancient school life. One side of this tablet (of the second century A.D.) has the remains of a multipli

FIG. 193.-IVORY Stilus (No. 456). 2:3.

FIG. 194.-ROMAN PENS AND Stili. 1:2.

cation table in Greek characters up to three times ten. The Greeks used the letters, of their alphabet as numbers, and instead of "twice two is four," said "B times B is D," and so on. The other side of the tablet has a list of Greek words divided into their roots and suffixes, e.g. θαρ-σων, θε-ων, etc. These tablets were not as a rule used singly, but hinged together, so that the waxen surface was protected when the two or more leaves were closed. The present tablet was composed of two leaves, one of which is in the Department of Manuscripts with a writing exercise upon it.

The holes for the hinges are seen in the leaf exhibited in this Case, and the use of the tablets is well shown by the accompanying illustration from an ancient wall-painting from Herculaneum (fig. 195), where one of many lady-poets of the time appears in the act of composition in the presence of an admiring companion. The arrangement of the tablets is interesting as forecasting the form of the modern book.

For documents of a more permanent character paper made from the papyrus plant (manufactured chiefly at Alexandria from the time of the foundation of that town in the fourth century B.C.) and pen and ink were used. A specimen of Greek writing on papyrus is seen in the Case (No. 458). It is a letter of the first century after Christ, asking that a supply of drugs of good quality-" none of your rotten stuff that

won't pass muster in Alexandria "-should

be

sent to the writer, Prokleios. Later on, parchment, prepared from the skins of animals, and made principally at Pergamon, in Asia Minor, began to rival papyrus as writingmaterial. Specimens of ancient reed and bronze pens (No. 459) are given in the illustration above (fig. 194), and a series of ancient inkpots is here figured (No. 460; fig. 196). The pens, whose split nibs have a curiously modern appearance, are all of Roman date. The reed pens come from Behnesa, in Egypt, and one of the bronze pens was found in the Tiber at Rome. The inkpots are also of Roman date. The middle one of the lower row has its hinged cover still remaining, with an inlaid vine-spray in silver round the rim. The one to the right of it is in blue faïence, and was found in Egypt.

1 Mus. Borb., VI., pl. xxxv. Cf. Ovid, Met. ix. 523:

Dextra tenet ferrum, vacuam tenet altera ceram.

This Case contains no example of iron stili, but several, found in Britain, will be seen in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities (Central Saloon, Table-Case B).