Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/492

 330 COLLECTIONS ILLUSTKATIVE OF of geometrical designs, with figures of infinite variety, both of form and colour. The largest of the many floors at Wood- chester has in the centre Orpheus, attended by animals, birds, and fish. In the four corners of the great square surrounding the large centre circle, are some elegant figures, or Naiads, in floating positions ; these partake to some extent of the beauty of the figures at Cirencester. At Withington^ there was a fine pavement, also engraved by Lysons, and similar to the one above-mentioned at Barton Farm. At Horkstow,® in Lincolnshire, Orpheus and the animals occur, but coarsely done ; there is a chariot race in the circus, spirited, the horses better than the human figures. Orpheus also occurs at Winterton,'^ in Lincolnshire ; at Little- cote, in Wiltshire, discovered in 1730 ; and at Ivonand and Cheire, in Switzerland, found in 1778 ; at Bignor there are representations of several classical subjects, and at Frampton, in Dorsetshire, men on horseback in contests with leopards and in chase of other animals. Throughout the whole series of those found in Gloucestershire, there is a prevailing similarity of design ; every border, ornament, or pattern occurring in the Cirencester floors, is to be found in the floors at Wood- chester. All these ornaments prevailed in the pavements of the time of Hadrian. It might seem probable, therefore, that the artists who executed them were brought from Rome to assist in decorating the grand Imperial Villa at Wood- chester, and, finding sufficient encouragement for their art, remained in the colony, and very possibly in Corinium itself In no part of England have so many Roman mosaic pave- ments been discovered, and with such striking propinquity, as in the country of which Corinium was the capital. The heads of Ceres, Flora, and Pomona, the figures of Actieon and ISilenus and head of Medusa, in the pavement No. 2 repre- sented in our plate, are superior in design to any of those at Woodchester, and call to my recollection the gorgeous, floors of the Vatican Museum, rescued from the ruins of Hadrian's Villa,and other decaying edifices of the Romans in Italy, while the less ornate floors in black and white are similar to those now in the minor apartments of the Papal Museum ; but few that remain in England will compare in extent with the superb floor from the Pinacoteca of the Baths of Caracalla, '■ Discovered in liJl 1, published by Lysons. Parts of this arc now in the British Museum. '■ Discovei-cd in 17!)ti. ^ Discovered in 1747.