The manner in which pottery illustrates history brings us to one of the most interesting features of the study (Fig. 1). While the connoisseur is deep in the history of the art itself, the student prefers to view it in its relation to that of mankind. It suggests difficulties, confirms deductions, and offers hints for the solution of the problems of history. The memory of extinct nations is perpetuated by the clay records which have survived their submergence in the tide of time. In these we may read, as in a book, of the gods they worshipped, of their daily life, of their death and burial. Historians now, in fact, consult the relics of the potter’s art with as much confidence and readiness as they would turn to the pages of an old-world chronicle. Migrations, intercourse, and conquest have all been recorded in clay. One might in that way define with the utmost exactness the line bounding the vast empire of Rome. The bricks or tiles, placed over the graves of the soldiers or found in their camps, show the stations of the legions and the extent of conquest. Wherever “the Empress of the world Of yore her eagle wings unfurled,” in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Jerusalem, or elsewhere, there have been found tiles or bricks stamped with the number of the legion or its distinctive appellation. The tragic end of Quintilius Varus is known to all readers of Roman history. A Roman proconsul of high birth, and enriched by the governorship of Syria, he was appointed to the command of the army confronting the hordes of Germany. Surprised by the German chief Hermann, or Arminius, his army was almost annihilated, and he, in despair, after the fashion of his time, sought death by his own hand. The Emperor Augustus wailed for months, “Varus, give me back my legions,” the legions which were lying on the field, at the farthest point to which the armies of Rome had penetrated, and also the farthest in that direction, at which any specimens of Roman pottery have been found. From the funereal urns of the Greeks we are enabled to tell how far they pursued their conquests in any direction. Other nations left, in the lands to which their arms were carried, similar mementos of their presence, which, on being exhumed, after lying for centuries covered thickly over by the dust time is continually spreading over the past, are transferred to the page of history.