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The Romans obtained from the east, and particularly from Egypt, a set of vessels which they distinguished by the name of vasa murrhina, and which were held by them in very high estimation. They were never larger than to be capable of containing from about thirty-six to forty cubic inches. One of the largest size cost, in the time of Pliny, about 7000l. Nero actually gave for one 3000l. They began to be known in Rome about the latter days of the republic. The first six ever seen in Rome were sent by Pompey from the treasures of Mithridates. They were deposited in the temple of Jupiter in the capitol. Augustus, after the battle of Actium, brought one of these vessels from Egypt, and dedicated it also to the gods. In Nero’s time they began to be used by private persons; and were so much coveted that Petronius, the favourite of that tyrant, being ordered for execution, and conceiving that his death was owing to a wish of Nero to get possession of a vessel of this kind which he had, broke the vessel in pieces in order to prevent Nero from gaining his object.

There appear to have been two kinds of these vasa murrhina; those that came from Asia, and those that were made in Egypt. The latter were much more common, and much lower priced than the former, as appears from various passages in Martial and Propertius.

Many attempts have been made, and much learning displayed by the moderns to determine the nature of these celebrated vessels; but in general these attempts were made by individuals too little acquainted with chemistry and with natural history in general to qualify them for researches of so difficult a nature. Some will have it that they consisted of a kind of gum; others that they were made of glass; others, of a particular kind of shell. Cardan and Scaliger assure us that they were porcelain vessels; and this opinion was adopted likewise by Whitaker, who supported it with his usual violence and arrogance. Many conceive them to have been made of some precious stone, some that they were of obsidian; Count de Veltheim thinks that they were made of the Chinese agalmatolite, or figure stone; and Dr. Hager conceives that they were made from the Chinese stone yu. Bruckmann was of opinion that these vessels were made of sardonyx, and the Abbé Winckelmann joins him in the same conclusion.

Pliny informs us that these vasa murrhina were formed from a species of stone dug out of the earth in Parthia, and especially in Carimania, and also in other places but little known.79 They must have been very abundant at Rome in the time of Nero; for Pliny informs us that a man of consular rank, famous for his collection of vasa murrhina, having died, Nero forcibly deprived his children of these vessels, and they were so numerous that they filled the whole inside of a theatre, which Nero hoped to have seen filled with Romans when he came to it to sing in public.

It is clear that the value of these vessels depended on their size. Small vessels bore but a small price, while that of large vessels was very high; this shows us that it must have been difficult to procure a block of the stone out of which they were cut, of a size sufficiently great to make a large vessel.

These vessels were so soft that an impression might be made upon them with the teeth; for Pliny relates the story of a man of consular rank, who drank out of one, and was so enamoured with it that he bit pieces out of the lip of the cup: “Potavit ex eo ante hos annos consularis, ob amorem abraso ejus margine.” And what is singular, the value of the cup, so far from being injured by this abrasure, was augmented: “ut tamen injuria ilia pretium augeret; neque est hodie murrhini alterius præstantior indicatura.”80 It is clear from this that the matter of these vessels was neither rock crystal, agate, nor any precious stone whatever, all of which are too hard to admit of an impression from the teeth of a man.

The lustre was vitreous to such a degree that the name vitrum murrhinum was given to the artificial fabric, in Egypt.

The splendour was not very great, for Pliny observes, “Splendor his sine viribus nitorque verius quam splendor.”

The colours, from their depth and richness, were what gave these vessels their value and excited admiration. The principal colours were purple and white, disposed in undulating bands, and usually separated by a third band, in which the two colours being mixed, assumed the tint of flame: “Sed in pretio varietas colorum, subinde circumagentibus se maculis in purpuram candoremque, et tertium ex utroque ignescentem, velut per transitum coloris, purpura rubescente, aut lacte candescente.”

Perfect transparency was considered as a defect, they were merely translucent; this we learn not merely from Pliny, but from the following epigram of Martial: Nos bibimus vitro, tu murra, Pontice: quare?

Prodat perspicuus ne duo vina calix.

Some specimens, and they were the most valued, exhibited a play of colour like the rainbow: Pliny says they were very commonly spotted with “sales, verrucæque non eminentes, sed ut in corpore etiam plerumque sessiles.” This, no doubt, refers to foreign bodies, such as grains of pyrites, antimony, galena, &c., which were often scattered through the substances of which the vessels were made.

Such are all the facts respecting the vasa murrhina to be found in the writings of the ancients; they all apply to fluor spar, and to nothing else; but to it they apply so accurately as to leave little doubt that they were in reality vessels of fluor spar, similar to those at present made in Derbyshire.81

The artificial vasa murrhina made at Thebes, in Egypt, were doubtless of glass, coloured to imitate fluor spar as much as possible, and having the semi-transparency which distinguishes that mineral. The imitations being imperfect, these factitious vessels were not much prized nor sought after by the Romans, they were rather distributed among the Arabians and Ethiopians, who were supplied with glass from Egypt.

Rock crystal is compared by Pliny with the stone from which the vasa murrhina were made; the former, in his opinion, had been coagulated by cold, the latter by heat. Though the ancients, as we have seen, were acquainted with the method of colouring glass, yet they prized colourless glass highest on account of its resemblance to rock crystal; cups of it, in Pliny’s time, had supplanted those of silver and gold; Nero gave for a crystal cup 150,000 sistertii, or 625l.