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A heap of little reddish bricks that once were fashioned into houses; a heap of broken jars or amphorae myriads of them that served to carry the water from the old nourishing river; and the remains of walls, repaired at diverse epochs, where stones inscribed with hieroglyphs lie upside down against fragments of Grecian obelisks or Coptic sculptures or Roman capitals.
Cicero represents those that could hold two thousand amphorae, or about sixty tons, as very large; there were, however, occasionally enormous ships built: one of the most remarkable for size was that of Ptolemy; it was four hundred and twenty feet long, and if it were broad and deep in proportion, its burden must have been upwards of seven thousand tons, more than three times the burden of one of our first rates; but it is probable that it was both flat bottomed and narrow.
Several earthen amphorae were standing in rows against the walls, but the Massic and Falernian with which they were once stored, had probably long been totally absorbed by the earth and ashes, which were now the sole contents of these venerable jars.
He was also odious to the fathers on account of a new law which Quintus Claudius, tribune of the people, had carried against the senate, Caius Flaminius alone of that body assisting him, that no senator, or he who had been father of a senator, should possess a ship fit for sea service, containing more than three hundred amphorae.
There in several places a single jugerum of land produces ten cullei of wine. Is it not the same in the region of Faventia where the vines are called tre centaria because a jugerum yields three hundred amphorae of wine," and, looking at me, he added, "indeed L. Martius, your chief engineer, said that the vines on his Faventine farm yielded that much.
Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much life, power, and, so to speak, predestination, that in our schools of architecture in particular, at the present time, the professors, who are detestable, produce, not only unconsciously but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils; quite the reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphorae and produced pots.
In return she supplied the colonists with her own manufactured articles; with fabrics in linen, wool, cotton, and perhaps to some extent in silk; with every variety of pottery, from dishes and jugs of the plainest and most simple kind to the most costly and elaborate vases and amphorae; with metal utensils and arms, with gold and silver ornaments, with embossed shields and paterae, with faince and glass, and also with any foreign products or manufactures that they desired and that the countries within the range of her influence could furnish.
On the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments, and ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was exhibited in Berlin. Amphorae hung from the ceiling, and a litter of curiosities strewed the rich red Turkey carpet.
Immediately opposite, on an embossed ivory stand, and protected from air and dust by a glass case, were two antique goblets, one of green-veined agate, one of blood-red onyx; and into the coating of wax, spread along the ivory slab, were inserted amphorae, one dry and empty, the other a third full of Falerian, whose topaz drops had grown strangely mellow and golden in the ashy cellars of Herculaneum, and had doubtless been destined for some luxurious triclinium in the days of Titus.
'Would you really like it? Albert's uncle asked. 'I'm afraid they'll be but dull dogs, the Antiquities, stuffy old gentlemen with amphorae in their buttonholes instead of orchids, and pedigrees poking out of all their pockets. We laughed because we knew what an amphorae is. If you don't you might look it up in the dicker.
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