Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/262

 Recent Excavations at Carthage. Three of the panels are nearly perfect, they are each 4 feet wide at the base, and 4 feet 4 inches high ; and a fragment of a fourth has been preserved. One of them (No. 3 in plan, and Plate X. fig. 2) represents a female, draped, and leaning back on a square cippus, on which she rests her right hand. On another cippus in front of her are two cups, and at the foot of it a brazen bucket, on which lies a green branch. From behind the cippus rises a tree, and in it is a swallow, to which the female is pointing with her left hand. The next panel (No. 4 in plan, and Plate XI. fig. 2) represents a female figure dancing before a circular cippus, on which is placed a little statue with a leafy bower behind it. The female is very strangely dressed, her robe being ornamented with dark bands spotted with golden plates, and terminating in barbed tongues, possibly intended to represent snake-like ornaments; she holds in her hands long castanets. The third panel (No. 7 in plan, and Plate XII. fig. 2) represents a female resting with the left elbow on a square (.ippus, and taking with a stylus some red fruit out of a glass bowl standing on another cippus, above which appears a fruit tree. The fragment (Plate XII. fig. 1) is supposed by Mr. Davis to have belonged to the compartment No. 10, but it was at any rate found beyond the foundations of the wall which has been already mentioned. It represents the upper part of a female figure resting her left arm on a square cippus, and holding in her right hand a sistrum. A portion of the upper edge remains, which is evidently a segment of a smaller circle than those bounding the panels before described ; and the figure likewise seems more compressed than the other. I feel, therefore, convinced that it is a portion of one of the inner panels. The figures in the several panels have been supposed to be priestesses; but there is little doubt that they were intended to represent the Roman months. In Montfaucon's work " Les Antiquites ExpliqueV' Supplement, torn. i. PI. iv xvi. are engravings of the illuminations of an ancient calendar preserved in the Imperial library at Vienna.* It seems to have been executed for some distinguished person of the name of Valentinus; he is conjectured to have been the Duke of Illyria who was living about A.D. 354. Each of the illuminations represents a month as a human figure accompanied by various emblems. Under each is inscribed a tetrastich attributed to Ausonius, descriptive of the months. The illuminations, it will be seen, contain some symbols which are not alluded to in the poetry. Published by Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. lib. IT. Appendix ; also by Kollar, Analecta Vind. torn. i. p. 94C ; and in Gnevius, Thes. Ant. Rom. torn. viii. p. 96. Another Roman Calendar with illustrations, but imperfect, was published by Bncherius.