age, but in Britain it was largely
adopted, as in the well-known Castor ware made on the site of that name
(_Durobrivae_) in Northamptonshire. Many of the vases found or made here
have gladiatorial combats, hunting-scenes, or chariots executed by this
method (fig. 38). The decoration was applied in the form of a thick
viscous slip, usually of the same colour as the clay, but reduced to
this consistency with water, and was laid on by means of a narrow tube
or run from the edge of a spatula. The Castor ware appears to date from
the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.

Painted wares are at all times rare, but were occasionally produced in
Gaul, Germany and Britain. A notable class of such ware seems to have
been produced in the Rhine district, represented by small jars covered
with a glossy black coating, on which are painted in thick white slip
inscriptions of a convivial character, such as BIBE, REPLE, DA VINUM, or
VIVAS (Plate IV. fig. 68). A very effective ware, obviously imitating
cut glass, by means of sharply incised patterns, was made at Lezoux in
both the red and black varieties.

LITERATURE.--Dragendorff in _Bonner Jahrbucher_, xcvi. 37 ff.;
Dechelette, _Vases ceramiques de la Gaule romaine_ (1904); Walters,
_Ancient Pottery_, ii. chaps, xxi.-xxiii.; _British Museum Catalogue
of Roman Pottery_ (1908). (H. B. Wa.)

PERSIAN, SYRIAN, EGYPTIAN AND TURKISH POTTERY[9]

Formerly, in all general accounts of the potter's art, it was the custom
to pass over the period between the fall of the Roman empire and the
appearance of the beautiful Persian and Syrian pottery of the early
middle ages, as if the intervening centuries had produced nothing worthy
of note. Even yet the successive steps by which this beautiful art arose
are largely matters of inference and deduction, but it must be borne in
mind that while the Greeks and Romans made singularly little use of
glaze and painted colour, the Egyptians and the inhabitants of Syria and
Mesopotamia had long been noted for their skill in this direction. In
discussing the pottery of these peoples we have already pointed out at
what a very early period they had developed the production of rich and
beautiful coloured glazes--the Egyptians as a jewel-like decoration of
small pieces made in a very sandy paste, or actually carved from stone,
and the Assyrians, on a bolder scale, in their glazed and coloured
brickwork. Though the Egyptian and Syrian empires were overthrown, the