Specŭlum
（
ἔνοπτρον, κάτοπτρον). For mirrors the ancients used
round or oval, also square, plates of polished metal, generally of copper, mixed with tin,
zinc, and other materials, and often silvered and gilded. In later times they were also made
of massive silver, the finest being the work of Praxiteles in B.C. 328. They were often
provided with a decorated handle and ornamented on the back with engravings, mostly of
mythological objects. To keep them bright, a sponge with powdered pumice-stone was usually
fastened to them (Plato, 72 C). The best metallic mirrors were produced at
Brundisium.
Glass mirrors were probably known in antiquity, consisting of a glass plate covered with a
thin leaf of metal at the back (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N.
xxxvi. 26). As thus prepared, however, they were not so good as the others, the modern
backing of tinfoil and quicksilver being yet unknown.
The Etruscan mirrors are in some respects remarkably fine, the finest of all being
represented below. Besides these hand-mirrors, there were also in the time of the emperors
mirrors as high as a man
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Back of Etruscan Mirror. (Berlin Museum.)
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(
Q. N. i. 17; cf. Quintil. xi. 3, 68), which were either permanently
fixed in the wall or (as in Vitruv. ix. 8, 2) let up and down like a sash.
Greek mirrors were unknown to archaeologists until 1867, when the first specimen was
discovered at Corinth. In design they are even more beautiful than those of Etruria. They are
of two kinds: (
a) disc mirrors, like the Etruscan mirrors, and generally
round, consisting of a single disc with a polished convex front, to reflect the face, and a
concave back, ornamented with figures traced with the engraver's burin. This variety had a
handle in the form of a statuette resting on a pedestal. (
b) Another
variety (“box-mirrors”), especially frequent in Greece, consists of two
metallic discs, one enclosed within the other, and sometimes held together by a hinge. The
cover was externally ornamented with figures in low-relief, and was internally polished and
silvered to reflect the face. The second disc, forming the body of the case, was decorated
internally with figures engraved with a sharp point. In the British Museum is a mirror from
Corinth, representing Pan playing at the game of “Five Stones” with a
Nymph attended by Eros. There is no mention of mirrors in Homer; and the oldest Greek mirrors
now extant do not antedate the sixth century B.C. See Blümner,
Technologie, iv. pp. 192, 194, 265 foll., 403; E. Gerhard,
Etruskische Spiegel (Berlin, 1843); and De Witte,
Les Miroirs chez les Anciens (Brussels, 1873).
