Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/47

Rh a gem executed in the very noblest style of the Augustan Age. The discovery, therefore, of it at Stanwix (the supposed Axelodunum), near Carlisle, is a very memorable event in the history of Roman-British remains; for though old Leland, just awakening from the night of Gothicism, speaks with admiration of the "cornalines marvellously well entayled" frequently turned up then, as now, in the same locality, yet our more familiar acquaintance with the highest antique art forces us to acknowledge that the glyphic works, bequeathed by the Romans to this soil, are always mediocre, generally barbarous, and unmistakeably the productions, not of the Italian or Asiatic artists of those times (far less of the earlier Grecian masters), but of the semi-civilized die-sinkers at the mints of Lugdunum and Treviri, and possibly of those working at Camulodunum and Augusta.

The material also is worthy of a passing notice. This opaque, light-blue paste, of the colour of zaffre, is the kind mentioned by Pliny in his valuable account of the glass- manufacture of his day, as being an imitation of the lapis-lazuli, "sapphires imitatum;" and our cabinets attest that it was a favourite medium with the Roman vitriarii for their imitations of camei, especially those of considerable volume. For the ancient sapphirus, our lapis-lazuli, ever retained that pre-eminence in rank which its beauty and rarity had given it amongst the first inventors of glyphics, the Assyrians, and Egyptians; even after the opened trade with India had rendered the stone comparatively cheap and common at Alexandria and Rome. Even at the end of the fourth century, Epiphanius mentions one kind of it as dignified with the title of "Royal;" and in the eleventh century the Norman poet, Marbodus, copying some lost ancient original, describes it as only conceded to the hands of princes. For this reason, important intagli, probably the privy signets of the personages represented upon them, continued during the whole course of antiquity to be engraved in lapis lazuli, from that of the Macedonian Perseus (in the Blacas Cabinet) down to that of Phocas, the Byzantine emperor (in the Martigny collection). Of camei in the same stone may be cited a fine Messalina (Marlborough), and a Crispina (Praun). At the head of works in the imitative