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‘WHAT SAID THIS RUDE ANTIQUE’: VICTORIAN RECEPTION OF ROMAN GLASS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2022

Roswyn Wiltshire
Roswyn Wiltshire*
Affiliation:
St Cross College, University of Oxford, UK
*
roswyn.wiltshire@stx.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

Artefact collections are a key means for many people to interact with classical antiquity. The physicality of objects easily appeals to the imagination, evoking associations between the object and the viewer's experiences. Reception of artefacts is thus multilayered, even regarding what may seem to be very simple objects, such as ancient glass vessels uncovered and collected around the middle of the nineteenth century. Drawing on research into the Damon Collection (Canterbury Museum, New Zealand) this study explores Victorian reception of Roman glass, demonstrating the many and often complex ways in which objects of utilitarian origin in classical antiquity gained new meaning and surprising popularity among a broad public. Glass vessels were receptacles for ideas and the imagination, from adventure to questions of religion and empire. In particular, vessels identified as ‘lachrymatories’ became a very personal empathetic link to the classical past, with influence on popular imagination enduring to the present day.

Keywords

Roman glassVictorian collectingclassical antiquity collectionslachrymatory bottlesclassical reception
Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , October 2022 , pp. 267 - 284
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 Damon published A Catalogue of the Shells of Great Britain and Ireland with Their Synonyms and Authorities (Weymouth, 1857), and The Geology of Weymouth and the Isle of Portland. With Notes on the Natural History of the Coast and Neighbourhood (London, 1860). In 1890 he published a local archaeological find: ‘Roman Amphora or Wine Jar’, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Proceedings 11 (1890), 88–90.

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7 Ibid., 429–30.

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11 Quoted in Goren, ‘Scientific organizations as agents of change: the Palestine Exploration Fund, the Deutsche Verein zur Erforschung Palästinas and nineteenth-century Palestine’, Science Direct 27 (2001), 153–65.

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15 Ezekiel 26–28.

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18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 An 1875 article on a proposed rail network through Syria and Lebanon even comments, regarding ancient Tyre, that ‘little weight, however, can be given to anything Ezekiel may have said on the subject’. In contrast to other articles this one describes the contemporary town of Tyre as ‘busy, thriving, neat’. With Tyre as a proposed terminus there was incentive in a positive description; nevertheless, it presents a very different view that highlights the exaggeration of the romanticizing accounts. ‘Life in Syria’, The Examiner (10 July 1875), 777.

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37 S.G.W.B. (n. 31).

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39 Ibid.

40 ‘Derby Museum Exhibition’, 3.

41 H. P. Robinson, Fading Away, 1858, discussed in P. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996), 40–1 and pl. 2.

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46 Jalland (n. 40), 288, 299.

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51 S.G.W.B. (n. 31).

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53 J. Labat, Voyages du père Labat de l'ordre des FF. Prêcheurs, en Espagne et en Italie. Tome IV (Paris, 1730), 148–9 ; E. M. Littré, Histoire naturelle de Pline traduite en François (Paris, 1778), 149.

54 For example, <https://www.timelesstraditionsgifts.com/history.htm>, <http://www.tearbottle.com/>, and <https://www.memorials.com/tear-bottles.php> all sell contemporary tear bottles; <http://www.lachrymatory.com/> is dedicated purely to the history of lachrymatory use; and <http://www.aaronshoulders.ca/tearjar.htm> gives yet another version of their apparent use by the Greeks and Victorians. Some authors have posted articles online debunking the Victorian layer of the legend: see C. Woodyard, ‘Transparent Fiction: The Myth of the Victorian Tear Bottle’, 16 May 2017, <http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/13531/>; S. Vatomsky, ‘Debunking the Myth of 19th-Century “Tear-Catchers”’, 2 May 2017, <https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tearcatchers-victorian-myth-bottle>. All sites accessed 12 January 2020.

55 A. Vingerhoets, Why Only Humans Weep. Unravelling the Mysteries of Tears (Oxford, 2013), 240.

56 Auckland War Memorial Museum, accession no. 1937.17 (no. 12 in the Ancient Worlds room).