randine;" the third and best in
the Museo Municipale al Celio. This last contains over a thousand
specimens, and a unique set of the products of Roman kilns. In fact, the
first hall of the Museo is set apart exclusively for the study of
ancient building and decorative materials.

Roman bricks were square, oblong, triangular, or round, the latter being
used only to build columns in the Pompeiian style. The largest bricks
that have been discovered in my time measure 1.05 meters in length.
They were set into an arch of one of the great stairs leading to the
avenue or boulevard established in Imperial times on the top of the
agger of Servius. Roman bricks are very often stamped with a seal, the
legend of which contains the names of the owner and the manager of the
kilns, of the maker of the tile, of the merchant entrusted with the sale
of the products, and of the consuls under whose term of office the
bricks were made. These indications are not necessarily found all in one
seal.

The most important of them is the consular date, because it helps the
student to determine, within certain limits, the date of the building
itself. The rule, however, is far from being absolute, and before fixing
the date of a Roman structure from that of its brick stamps one must
take into consideration many other points of circumstantial evidence.
When we examine, for instance, the grain warehouses at Ostia, or
Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, and find that their walls have never
undergone repairs, that their masonry is characteristic of the first
quarter of the second century, that their bricks bear the dates of
Hadrian's age and no others, we may rest assured that the stamps speak
the truth. Their evidence is, in such a case, conclusive. But if the
bricks are variously dated, or bear the names of various kilns, and not
of one or two only, then their value as an evidence of the date of a
building is diminished, if not lost altogether....

The bricks, again, occasionally bear curious signs, such as footmarks of
chickens, dogs, or pigs, which stept over them while still fresh,
impressions of coins and medals, words or sentences scratched with a
nail, etc. A bricklayer, who had perhaps seen better times in his youth,
wrote on a tile the first verse of the Aeneid.

The great manufacturing center of Roman bricks was the district between
the viae Triumphalis, Cornelia, and the two Aureliae, now called the
Monti della Creta, which includes the southern s