03-03-2007, 01:37 AM
Quote:Anyone familiar with these lanterns? All look similar, but clearly are not the exact same one. Was this a popular style then? Would the cylindrical pane have been difficult to produce?
The German translates roughly as 'the candle burns in a cylinder of horn. To increase brightness it was raised, in a draft it was lowered' and that tells the whole story. These were not transparent but rather translucent (a bit like pearl lightbulbs) since they were made with thin sheets of horn to form the side walls. I seem to recall watching a TV programme about making sheets of horn like this which probably involved soaking or some such, but there are others more gifted in the craft department than I who could fill you in on that. There is no evidence that glass was ever used in such a capacity.
There is a copper-alloy oil flask from Aldborough (North Yorshire) that depicts a bored negro slave boy sitting on top of one of these lanterns, usually presumed to be waiting for his master (at the baths?!) in order to escort him through the night.
Pieces of copper-alloy lanterns turn up all over the empire (I catalogued parts of one from Chesters on Hadrian's Wall only last year and there are published pieces from the Magdalensberg in Austria). Only the Bay of Naples sites seem to have produced intact ones, but that is hardly surprising.
Mike Bishop
