468 APPENDIX, 21

is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has to examine; the language of art becomes more copious, but less terse and emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.

Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures, generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms, and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller (Denkmäler d. A. Kunst., i., taf. 49, No. 220), for a group of this kind in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.

On the coloumn of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4), this rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in the river bank is a recelining river-god, terminating at the waist. This is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.

On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15), a storm of rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire, with a mask or vizor attached.¹ The helmet is richly embossed with figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair on the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl. 1-4).

In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript. Ant., Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.

This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil. Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water-plant, and below the swan other water-plants, and a stork seated on a hydria, or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water-plants, and the hydria must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water, the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for the use of man.

Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.

One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic

¹ [This helmet is among the larger bronzes in the Anglo-Roman collection; for further particulars see E. T. Cook’s Popular Handbook to the ... British Museum, p. 728.]

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