There is in the British Museum an important collection of blown glass vessels which have been found in Syrian tombs. The actual _provenance_ is here, as indeed in the case of so many other finds of glass, very difficult to ascertain. Some of the pieces are said to come from the neighbourhood of Nazareth, but the majority were probably found nearer to the coast, not far from Sidon and Tyre. The forms are on the whole classical, but Oriental influences may be seen in some cases, as in the double _unguentaria_ which resemble certain Egyptian kohl-pots (Plate VII.). The apparent abundance of this Syrian glass, and the clear, nearly colourless material, point to a time rather after than before our era. We know that soon after the middle of the first century, all the various forms and applications that we associate with the blown glass of the Romans were in general use in Italy. The proof of this lies in the vast collection of ancient glass in the museum at Naples. There were some years ago in this collection more than eight thousand pieces of glass, and it is constantly being added to. By far the greater part of this glass comes from Pompeii. Now that town was destroyed in the year 79 A.D., and it had sixteen years previously suffered so seriously from an earthquake that little glass can have survived; we are thus able to fix within exceptionally narrow limits the date of most of the glass discovered in the ruins. Apart from a few elaborate examples extracted from the tombs—some of these may well be of an earlier date—we find a vast series of vessels adapted to various domestic purposes, but more especially to uses connected with the storing and drinking of wine. These are for the most part made of a transparent and often colourless blown glass. By this time, then, the art of the glass-blower must have been fully developed in Southern Italy. The Pompeian glass has been well preserved by the thick bed of dry ashes, and has suffered little from surface decomposition. [Illustration: _PLATE VII_ SEPULCHRAL GLASS FROM THE SYRIAN COAST FIRST CENTURY B.C. TO FIRST CENTURY A.D.] From a few scattered references in Roman writers we can in a measure trace the rapid change in the position of glass at Rome, say between the latter days of the Republic and the end of the reign of Augustus. Cicero mentions glass as an article of merchandise brought from Egypt, together with paper and linen. Strabo, writing under the rule of Augustus, says that at Rome every day new processes were invented for colouring glass and for simplifying its manufacture, so that ‘a successful imitation of crystal may now be made so cheaply that a drinking-glass with its stand can be sold for a copper coin’ (xvi. 25).