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Bronze objects in almost infinite variety have been found on Phoenician sites, but only a few of them can have been personal ornaments. They comprise lamps, bowls, vases, jugs, cups, armlets, anklets, daggers, dishes, a horse's bit, heads and feet of animals, statuettes, mirrors, fibulae, buttons, &c.
Disraeli somewhere describes a Syrian lady preferring the French polish of a western boot to the jewels of an eastern slipper. With a similar preference the British Celt abandoned his national art and adopted the Roman provincial fashion. He did not abandon it entirely. Little local manufactures of pottery or fibulae testify to its sporadic survival. We may briefly examine this last instance.
In many of the graves an iron knife was found lying by the skeleton; in others the bodies were decorated with bronze fibulae, richly gilt, and ornamented in front. Mr. W. Wylie, in his interesting account of these Anglo-Saxon graves, tells us that some of the bodies were as large as six feet six inches; whilst one or two warriors of seven feet were unearthed.
His purse, like an oil cruet. The fibulae, or lesser bones of his His genitals, like a joiner's planer. legs, like a pair of stilts. Their erecting muscles, like a His shin-bones, like sickles. racket. His elbows, like a mouse-trap. The perineum, like a flageolet. His hands, like a curry-comb. His arse-hole, like a crystal look- His neck, like a talboy. ing-glass.
Most fibulae are in bronze; but one, found in the treasury of Curium, and now in the Museum of New York, was of gold. This, however, was most probably a votive offering. It is impossible at present to reproduce the toilet table of a Phoenician lady. We may be tolerably sure, however, that certain indispensable articles would not be lacking.
The third chamber held lamps and fibulae in bronze, vases in alabaster, and, above all, the groups and vessels modelled in clay; while the fourth was the repository of the utensils in bronze, and of a certain number which were either in copper or in iron. In the further passage, which was not completely explored, there were nevertheless found seven kettles in bronze."
About 115-20, and again about 155-63 and 175-80, the northern part of the province was vexed by serious risings, and the civilian area was doubtless kept somewhat in disturbance. At Caerwent the evidence is confined to coins and fibulae, none of which seem earlier than Vespasian or Domitian: for the coins see Clifton Antiq. Both these belong to the Flavian period.
In these cases the visitor will find a great number of bronze utensils and personal ornaments: metal mirrors; lamps; incense vessels, or thuribula; the saucers for pouring libations, called paterae; tripods of all kinds and variously ornamented; candelabra; and the clasps of the Romans called fibulae.
His tunic was of the most dazzling white: his many fibulae were formed from the most precious stones: over his tunic flowed a loose eastern robe, half-gown, half-mantle, glowing in the richest hues of the Tyrian dye; and the sandals, that reached half way up the knee, were studded with gems, and inlaid with gold.
On the other hob sits Briney, hard at his syntax, with the Fibulae AEsiopii, as he called it, placed open at a particular passage, on the seat under him, with a hope that, when Philemy will examine him, the book may open at his favorite fable of "Gallus Gallinaceus a dung-hill cock."
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