"The table-silver which he had used
when a commoner he dedicated to the service of the banquets to be held
in the temples....He delighted greatly in varied and elaborate kinds of
glassware...." (Flavius Vopiscus' Augustan Histories: Tacitus XI.3)
The decoration of this juglet has
close parallels in the relief designs on a pair of bowls in a hoard of
silver vessels that was found in 1883 at Chaourse in France. Hoarding
of this kind was a consequence of the economic crisis that afflicted the
Roman world during the middle decades of the 3rd century A.D. So we can
assume this glass juglet was made in those troubled times.
The recurring “circles-and-dimples” motif that runs around the body of
the juglet suggests that both it and the Chaourse silverware were attempts
to imitate elite, shallow-faceted vessels that had been painstakingly
sculpted from rock crystal by lathe-cutting and abrasion. Rock crystal
was valued even above gold in Roman times, so it is unlikely the glassworker
actually ever saw such vessels. But glass workshops may well have had
pattern-books for each motif that was in-vogue among the wealthy.
Lathe-working in Roman
Glassware
