The embroidered robes worn by the wives of these men may be the feminine equivalent of the toga, possibly the palla contabulata, and may equally be marks of social position. A similar costume may be seen on the diptych of the Consul Philoxenus (A.D. 525) now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. It was to the feminine pallium or palla that contabulation was first applied at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, probably on the analogy of the costume worn by the priestesses of Isis; the fashion was then extended to the toga before the fourth century had begun. The male pallium resisted the change longer, and did not succumb until about the middle of the fourth century.2 In this case the alteration has an exceptional interest from the probability that the pallium contabulatum was the direct ancestor of the pallium sacrum, or archiepiscopal pall of the Roman Catholic Church. The growing popularity of the panula or planeta in the fourth century threatened the existence of the pallium, just as the pallium had itself threatened the existence of the toga. But it was felt impossible to abolish a garment so closely associated with the earliest days of the Church; so the process of contabulation it was converted into a narrow band, and worn above the panula as a mark of ecclesiastical rank. But as the panula was a poncho without sleeves, the pallium could no longer go under the right shoulder as heretofore, but was obliged to pass over it instead. It now rested on both shoulders like a collar, whence the Greek name wμodóptov, with one end hanging down in front and the other behind; and it was held in position by three pins or brooches, one over the breast, one on the right shoulder, and one behind.

Gradually the heavy contabulated folds were transformed into a single strip, a transformation already effected before the end of the sixth century, as may be seen from the fresco placed above the tomb of St. Cornelius by Pope John III, and from the figure of

1 Figured by Molinier, Histoire des Arts Industriels, Vol. I, Ivoires, 30, Paris, 1896.

2 In 382, it is enjoined by the lex vestiaria of Theodosius as the distinctive

mark of the officiales (vide Wilpert, Capitolo, 99, 100).

Figured by Wilpert, Capitolo, etc. 105, Fig. 17.

Bishop Maximianus in the mosaics of San Vitale at Ravenna. By the ninth century the awkward pins had been abandoned, and the pallium was made in one piece; and though the length of the pendants has been shortened, the general structure has remained the same to the present day. Other garments have survived in a similar manner through their adoption by the Church; the planeta was the prototype of the chasuble, and the lucerna or byrrhus, of the cope. The upper tunic or dalmatic had become an ecclesiastical vestment as early as the time of Sylvester (A.D. 314–335).

It may be of interest to conclude these notes on the gilded glasses by a few remarks on their relationship with other glass decorated with gold foil in earlier and later times. The discovery of the great majority of the specimens in the Roman catacombs induced the earlier antiquaries to regard the skill which produced them as something exclusively Christian; but as we have already seen, examples have been found outside Rome, while the occurrence of Jewish and pagan subjects makes it improbable that none but Christian artificers were employed in their manufacture. It is not astonishing that the number found beyond the limits of the catacombs should be very small, for they were exposed to greater risk of destruction, and even their fragments had from the first little prospect of preservation. Itinerant dealers in ancient Rome were always on the look-out for broken glass, which could be sold for remelting or for mixing with sulphur to form a kind of solder. The presence of gold, even in the attenuated form of gold leaf, would render the fate of broken fondi d'oro doubly sure. De Rossi once found a fragment from which most of the gold had been deliberately scraped away. The predominance of discoveries in the catacombs does not therefore prove an exclusively Christian origin. There was, indeed, little

1 Theories on the origin of the pallium sacrum are numerous. In addition to derivations from the toga (cf. Rock, The Church of our Fathers, II, 30), there are others from the lorum. The latter was a narrow band or scarf, and seems in some cases (e.g. on consular diptychs) to be confused with what Wilpert would call

the toga contabulata. On the whole question see Robault de Fleury, La Messe, VIII. 45 (1889), and Grisar, Festschrift zum 11-hundertjährigen Jubiläum des Deutschen Campo Santo in Rom, 83-114 (Freiburg, 1897).

Martial, Ep. I, 42. Various passages in Juvenal allude to such employment of broken glass.

antecedent probability that the early Christians should have suddenly invented a style of decorating glass unknown to their pagan neighbours.

But there is something more than negative evidence for believing that the Christians only adapted to their own use a process which had already found favour with Roman workmen, and that this process was not invented in Italy. There seems to be a great probability that Egypt, the country in which glass was first made, was the home of this late development of the glassmaker's art. It is well known that about the beginning of the Christian era Alexandria was the great centre where glass was manufactured; and from this city, as from Venice in later times, it was distributed in great quantities throughout the civilised world. In the early days of the Empire the art was transplanted into Italy, first into Campania, and subsequently into Rome, where its products largely displaced the more costly vessels of silver plate. The objects which still exist as documents in support of the Egyptian origin of the gilded glasses are not very numerous, but they are of considerable interest. Herr Theodor Graf, of Vienna, has obtained from Egypt a medallion with a figure of Minerva' executed in the style of the catacomb glasses, and probably dating from quite an early period of the Empire. From the same country come the headband, also belonging to Herr Graf, containing the little medallion with the crux monogrammatica, and various beads, chiefly discovered at Akhmîm (Panopolis) with gold leaf imbedded in their

mass.

It is conceivable that the válva Siáxpvoa mentioned by Athenæus (Deipnosophista, V, 199) as possessions of Ptolemy Philadelphus may have been of the nature of the gilded glasses, though there is no positive proof that such was the case. If they were, the history of the process is carried back more than two centuries before Christ. There are other objects now in the British Museum, which, though not found in Egypt, were probably made there. Of these the most important are two hemispherical bowls from Canosa (Canusium), the lower parts of which are double, enclosing an acanthus ornament

1 Figured, Vopel, 77.