In the absence of any continuous series of glass vessels that can be classed as Greek, it would seem somewhat of a contradiction to say that the artistic glass of the Romans was founded upon examples distinctly Greek in outline and decoration. And yet there can be no doubt that in the earlier period, at any rate, the source of inspiration of the Roman glass-maker was the same as that of the contemporary potter or bronze-worker. At the time when objects of glass were first brought to Italy in the ships of the Greek traders, we may be certain that the places where this glass was made—whether these be sought at Alexandria or at one or more of the cities of the Phœnician coast—had been completely Hellenised. Again, the new material found its way in through towns which, if not Greek speaking, were thoroughly Greek in culture, through Cumæ—in the neighbourhood of this city glass was probably first made in Italy—and through the semi-Greek towns of Apulia. But in one important respect this Greek glass differed from the contemporary bronze and pottery. It was to the Greeks a new art with few old traditions, and these not of Hellenic origin. In the first century before Christ the industry was only beginning to be of any importance. It thus came about that in a greater degree than perhaps any other branch of ancient art, the manufacture of glass may be regarded as an art essentially Roman. This fact may help to account for the extreme poverty of the material for its history and methods of manufacture to be found in Roman writers. There were in this case no Greek authorities for these writers to fall back upon. Compare the meagre and confused narrative of Pliny in the brief section that he devotes to glass with his detailed, and in a measure scholarly, accounts in other departments of the arts where he could borrow from earlier Greek technical treatises. The glass that we know as Roman was made for a period of about four hundred years. It was manufactured at one time or another in nearly every country into which the Romans penetrated, from Syria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, to Spain and Britain on the other. It has even been found in the tombs of tribes that the Romans never subdued, as in Denmark and Sweden. There is scarcely an application of glass known in Europe in the eighteenth century that was not known also to the Romans, and they were masters of the various processes by which glass may be decorated. MILLEFIORI GLASS M. Froehner, in his introduction to the catalogue of the Charvet collection, has divided Roman glass into as many as fifteen classes. Some of these divisions are perhaps rather arbitrary, and very little success has attended any attempt made by him or by other writers on the subject to classify the vast material on a geographical basis, still less to trace the history of its development.