The halls and saloons on the ground-floor were paved with marble or mosaic work,[293] which often, if we may judge from the specimens left us by their imitators, represented pictures of the greatest elegance, containing, among other things, likenesses of the loveliest divinities of Olympos.[294] These mosaics were wrought with minute shards of precious marbles of various colours, interspersed with pieces of amber,[295] and, probably, also, of glass, as was the fashion in Italy, where whole hyaline floors have been found consisting either of one piece or of squares so finely joined together, that the sutures were invisible to the naked eye. No mention, I believe, is made in Greek authors of lining the walls of apartments with glass, or even of glass windows,[296] which, however, were common in the cities of Magna Græcia in the age immediately succeeding that of our Saviour. It is extremely probable, however, that as the Greeks were as well acquainted as the Romans with the properties of the lapis specularis;[297] they likewise made use of thin plates of this stone, or talc, or gypsum, as they still do in Egypt for window-panes. So much, indeed, seems inferable from a passage of Plutarch,[298] as, also, that transparent squares of horn were employed for the same purpose, as oyster-shells and oiled paper still are in China. Previously, however, the windows[299] (sometimes square and situated high in the wall, sometimes reaching from the ceiling to the floor) were closed with lattice-work[300] in iron, bronze, or wood, over which, in bad weather, blinds of hair-cloth or prepared leather were usually drawn. ----- Footnote 293: Plin. xxxvi. 60. Poll. vii. 121. Cf. Sir W. Hamilton, Acc. of Discov. at Pomp. p. 7, seq. pl. 5. Footnote 294: Galen, in Protrept, § 8. t. i. p. 19. Footnote 295: Hom. Eires. 10. p. 199. Franke. Footnote 296: See the authorities collected by Nixon, Phil. Trans, t. i. p. 126, sqq. Seneca speaks of glass windows as a new invention, Epist. 90. Sir William Hamilton, however, in his Account of Discoveries made at Pompeii, observes:—“Below stairs is a room with a large bow-window; fragments of large panes of glass were found here, shewing that the ancients knew well the use of glass for windows.”—p. 13. Cf. Caylus, Rec. d’Ant. t. 2. p. 293. Mazois, Pal. de Scaur. p. 97. Castell. Villas of the Ancients, p. 4. Vitruv. vii. 3. Footnote 297: In lieu of the lapis specularis, they make use in Persia of thin slabs of Tabreez marble for the windows of baths, and other buildings requiring a soft subdued light.—See Fowler, Three Years in Persia, where the growth of this stone is curiously described.—i. 228, sqq. Footnote 298: De Plac, Phil. iii. 5, ed. Corsin. Flor. 1750, p. 81. Cf. Plin. Hist. Nat. xi. 37. Footnote 299: Sir W. Hamilt. Acc. of Discov. at Pomp. p. 7, seq. Antich. di Ercolano. t. i. tav. i. p. 1. tav. 3. p. 11. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 996. Footnote 300: