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Everyday Use
While poets wrapped silken words around glass's
transparency, most Romans enthused over glass just for its practical
everyday value.
As window panes:
"The house is large enough for my needs
but not expensive to keep up. It opens into a hall...and then there
are two colonnades, rounded like the letter D, which enclose a small
but pleasant courtyard. This makes a splendid retreat in bad weather,
being protected by windows and still more by the overhanging roof."
(Pliny the Younger, Letters II.17)
As wine beakers:
"We drink out of a glass, you from a murrhine,
Ponticus. Why? Lest a transparent goblet reveal you are serving
two kinds of wine." (Martial, Epigrams IV.85)
As lamps in churches:
"Then, in the middle of the basilica hang
hollow lamps, attached to the high ceiling by brass chains. They
look like trees throwing arms like vine shoots; at their tips the
branches have glass goblets as their fruit, and the light kindled
in them is, so to say, their spring blossoms. With the abundant
foliage of their flames, they resemble close-packed stars, and stud
the heavy darkness with countless flashes." (Paulinus of Nola,
Poems XIX.416).
Transparency was the one property of glass with
which pottery, its main rival in the domestic marketplace, simply
could not compete.
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Wine beaker
Late 4th century A.D.
Ht., 11.7 cm
Left: Jar-shaped lamp
5th century A.D.
Right: Long-stemmed lamp
6th century A.D.
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