144 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS METALS, &c.
the same trick with the only patella he,
although believing himself secure in his quality of " Civis Romanus,"
had ventured to produce (Verrin. iv. 22). Pliny notes that Zenodorus
(Nero's daring Colossus-maker) had copied a pair of vases made by the
ancient master Calamis, so exactly that the difference between them was
hardly to be detected : a convincing proof that the old repoussé work
had gone out of use, not from the want of artistic ability to execute
it, but solely in consequence of its unsuitableness to the service of
the table.
The
Roman old-plate collectors were a class identical with our own
old-china collectors, respectable, wealthy, elderly gentlemen, who
unmercifully bored their guests with the pedigree of all the pieces
adorning their side-boards. Martial has an amusing epigram (viii. 6)
upon some old Mr. Euctus, who after prosing upon the history of his
several bowls, chalices, and flagons, treats his friends " in Priam's
cups to Astyanax wine : " i. e. wine as young as the vessels
were ancient. The most extraordinary use to which silver plate was ever
put was that devised by Julius Caesar when aedile at the games given by
him in honour of his deceased father. Not merely was all the furnishing
of the arena formed out of silver ; but the only weapons allowed to the
combatants (condemned criminals) wherewith to encounter the wild
beasts engaging them were silver vessels : " Feras argenteis vasis
incessivere noxii." Though Pliny does not add the fact, it may be
concluded that these precious missiles, were, the combat done, left for
the spectators to scramble for. After such battering as the vases must
have sustained from the poor wretches whose sole chance of life lay in
the vigorous discharge of them against their sylvan foes, little value
would have been left to the pieces of plate beyond their intrinsic.
Caesar evidently borrowed the notion from the oft-seen festal fight
