Original scientific paper
Traces of Glassmakers in Roman Province of Dalmatia
Zrinka Buljević
Abstract
In the last decade in Dalmatia the fragments of three cups attributed to the famous 1st century glassblowers Ennion and Aristeas were found. Dalmatian Ennion’s cups come from the military camp in Tilurium (Gardun near Trilj) and from the Augusteum in Narona (Vid). The Naronitan vessel is the forth or fifth such vessel found on the route to Tremithus in Cyprus - Narona - Cavárzere near Adria - Romula - possibly Tarragona. Similar fragments are known from Mogador in Morocco as well as aforementioned fragment from Gardun in Croatia, which is too small to be attributed to some of Ennion’s cups with one or two handles.
Aristeas, Ennion’s follower, as a Cypriote signed the Naronitan cup from Augusteum and the cup in the Constable-Maxwell collection, and without the toponymic mark the cup in olive-green glass in the Strada Collection, Pavia.
The inscriptions on the flat horizontal tongues of two handles of scyphus from the Augusteum in Narona are worn and illegible so we don’t know who of Sidonians signed it in the 1st century AD. The Naronitan glass cameo of Livia with the youthful appearance and hairstyle with nodus certainly originated in Rome during the period of Tiberius, and is possibly a work of one of Dioskourides’ sons: Eutyches, Hyllos or Herophilos.
Only Salona in Dalmatia is proved to have been a glassworks centre not only by the remains of a glass furnace, but with certain epigraphic evidence - a sarcophagus fragment with the inscription of glassmaker Paschasius or Pascasius, and a marble mould for glass bottles with the inscription of glassmaker Miscenius Ampliatus.
Depictions of closed glass furnaces, and glassblowing scenes are preserved on three clay lamps from the 3rd quarter of 1st century AD, consistent with the spread of glassblowing technique, one from Prati di Monestirolo (Ferrara region, Italy), the one from Školarice (Slovenia: Regio X) and another from Asseria (Dalmatia). On the lamp from Asseria the names of two depicted glassblowers, freedmen are inscribed: [Tre]llus and Athenio, his assistant whose name suggests Athenian origin, his or his ancestor’s.
There is a possibility that the personal names on the bottoms of glass unguentaria and bottles are the names of glassmakers, so we relate the following names Rufinius, A(ntonius) Volumnius Ianuarius, Q. Dani Euhelpisti, L. Aemilius Blasius, C. Salvius Gratus, Cn. Pompeius Cassianus to Argyruntum (Starigrad), Iader (Zadar), Asseria (Podgrađe near Benkovac), Volcera (Bakar) and Zaton. If they were
glassmakers, their bottles were imported in Dalmatia from north Italy; note that there is a hypothesis about Blasius’ and Pompeius’ Dalmatian branch glass shop.
Keywords
Dalmatia; Roman Glass; Glassmakers
Hrčak ID:
2520
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2005.
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