Pompeii : its life and art / tr. into English by Francis W. Kelsey ... with numerous illustrations from original drawings and photographs.

  • August Mau
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pompeii : its life and art / tr. into English by Francis W. Kelsey ... with numerous illustrations from original drawings and photographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    584/644 (page 508)
    scruples. Reckoning the Roman pound as 327.453 grammes, the weight of the patera with its relief was 934.608 grammes, or 2.504 Troy pounds. This differs from the present weight by less than a gramme. Occasionally a name in the genitive case is found with the record of weight, written with the same kind of letters; in such cases it is probably safe to assume that the name is that of the original owner. On the under side of one of the pair of cups ornamented with skeletons (Fig. 217) is the inscription : GAVIAE P-ll-SclIIl; a later hand, writing with a fine point, added VAS II in the space after GAVIAE, as if to supply an obvious omission, so that the inscription in full would read, Gaviae. II \^pcndcnfia'] p\ondo libras'\ //, uncias VIII, \scrii- pula\ IV, ‘The property of Gavia. The two cups weigh 2 pounds, 8 ounces, and 4 scruples’ (2.351 Troy pounds). In some instances the name of a later owner has been scratched on the surface with a pointed tool. The name of a woman, Maxima, written in full or in abbreviation, appears on forty-five of the ])ieces in the Louvre. We may safely accept the con- clusion of De \hllcfosse, that she is probably the one who made the collection, obtaining her specimens from different sources, and that to her the Boscoreale treasure belonged at the time of the eruption. Besides the seals which were used in signing documents the Romans had stamps, signacula, which they impressed upon various articles as a means of identification or as an advertise- ment. Impressions of such stamps are found upon bricks and other objects of clay, and in one or two instances upon loaves of bread. Several charred loaves in the Naples Museum have the stamp: S^C\dcris Q. Grani Veri ser., — ‘(Made by) Celer, slave of Quintus Granius Verus.’ The names upon stamps appear regularly in the genitive case, as Popidi Prisci, spelled backward on the stamp, so that the letters appear in the right order in the impression. Since the time of Fiorelli many houses have been named from the stamps found in them ; in the house of the Vettii, for example, two stamps were found with the names of Aldus Vettius Restitutus and Aldus Vettius Conviva.