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A Guide to the Knowledge of Bath, Ancient and Modern
A Guide to the Knowledge of Bath Ancient and Modern Author:John Earle General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1864 Original Publisher: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green Subjects: Bath (England) History / General History / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. Wh... more »en you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. ROMAN A. D. 44 -- 410. j| O visitor of historical tastes should quit Bath without having paid a visit to the vestibule and corridors of the Institution, where he may see at a glance more of Roman Bath than we can convey to him in a chapter. After surveying the objects there deposited, he will need no assurance that during the period of Roman sway in Britain, Bath enjoyed at least as great importance as it has ever done in later times. Perhaps there is no town in England which can offer such telling proofs of ancient splendour as Bath has to shew in these Roman remains. When we contemplate these relics, we perceiveat once that the story of Bladud is not entirely composed of fictitious materials. Whether Bladud was the builder of a temple to Minerva or not, it is certain that there was such a temple here. The pediment is before our eyes with all its sculptured symbolism, telling unmistakeably of the worship of Minerva. However the other symbols may be disputed, the helmet and the owl can belong to no cultus but Minerva's. Then there are fragments of cornices and of friezes, which exhibit not only a degree of masterly design, but of mechanical workmanship, scarcely, if ever, yet seen in antiquities discovered in England. These objects are accompanied with fragments of huge fluted columns, and a Corinthian capital. Mr. Warner, the historian of Bath, was assured by Mr. Burke, that no other example of Corinthian architecture had up to his time been dis...« less