How to See the British Museum in Four Visits eBook

William Blanchard Jerrold
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 237 pages of information about How to See the British Museum in Four Visits.

How to See the British Museum in Four Visits eBook

William Blanchard Jerrold
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 237 pages of information about How to See the British Museum in Four Visits.
sepulchres of Etruria; arrow-heads and bronze swords of the Roman time; standards with the famous Roman eagles; helmets, including a famous one dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, by Hiero I. on the occasion of gaining a victory over the Tuscans at Cumae, upwards of four centuries before our era; and one found at Olympia, dedicated by the Argives; bronze plates, and military belts, from Vulci.  The next six cases (46-51) are filled with various Grecian and Roman antiquities, of which the visitor should particularly notice amid bronze amphorae, tripods, glass beads, weights in the shape of busts, sacrificial knives, and bronze hatchet heads, three cistae or boxes, with classical groups in relief upon them, the subject of one being Hercules grasping serpents.  These cistae were the toilette boxes of the ancients.  Here too the visitor should remark the hearth (a tripod) with charcoal still upon it, with fire-irons and cooking utensils; and a variety of tripods variously ornamented with sphinxes, Boreas carrying away Orithyia; and leaden vases from Delos, holding the ashes of the dead.  An interesting collection of candelabra, from the Etruscan sepulchres, is arranged in the next cases (52, 53).  These candelabra were highly esteemed throughout ancient Greece.  They are decorated chiefly with mythological subjects, and have, attached to them, vessels for dipping into larger vessels.  Those in the next case (54) are of the Roman period.  Having glanced at the censers and bronze lamps in the next cases (56-57) the visitor may pass on to the case numbered 58-64, in which is a large collection of bronze vessels, including unguent vases, which are the most highly decorated, braziers, cauldrons, and jugs.  The two next cases contain a great number of bronze figures of various heathen deities, representations of mythological events.  Here are, a winged Victory holding an egg; figures of Juno Sospita; figures for mirrors; Apollos; a giant hurling a rock; one of the Gorgons; figures of Mars, in the old grotesque style; a reclining Dionysus, drinking; satyrs; Aphrodite; Aurora bearing off Tithonus or Cephalus; Hercules; Ariadne playing on the lyre; Hercules killing the Maenalian stag; Minerva; and other figures, all drawn from Grecian mythology.  These cases present, at a glance, more than any other in the collection, the various excellences of ancient bronzes.  The ancient mirrors are arranged in the next two cases (68, 69)—­one polished to show their old effect; and in the 70th case are Etruscan and Roman fibulae or clasps in general use in the olden time, in lieu of buttons or hooks.  The drainings of the lake of Monte Falterona brought to light the most attractive objects of the next three cases (71-73), including the fine Etruscan statue of Mars, the large statue of a youth; and here also are a group of Aurora bearing off Memnon; and a satyr and a bacchante for the top of a candelabrum.  Finely ornamented mirrors, with figures chased, bas-relief, representing, among other subjects, Minerva before
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How to See the British Museum in Four Visits from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.