This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1895. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Room of the Vases. Most of the painted vases exhibited in this room were found between 1860 and 1870 in the course of excavations carried on in the necropolis of Caere (Cervetri). Those interested in this form of art are advised to leave this room until they have become familiar with the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican, where the Attic vases, in particular, are illustrated by much more numerous and much finer examples. The writer limits himself here to a description of two objects placed in this room. 620. Cista of wood inlaid with silver. Found in 1861 atPraeneste (Palestrina), in a so-called 'tomba a fossa'. The silver ornaments alone are ancient. The wooden body of the cista, of which only a few mouldering fragments remained, has been replaced by the modern restorer. The body of the cista is cylindrical in form like the bronze cists found in the tombs of the necropolis of Praeneste belonging to the third century B.C. The lid, however, instead of being convex, is flat, and it has no handle. The cist itself has now one movable handle, but in its original condition it probably had two. The ornaments decorating the lid and the lowermost zone of the cist, and also the figures of animals immediately below the upper edge, are partly in repousse work and partly engraved; the masks terminating in palmettoes from which the handle springs, and the winged figures like Harpies on the vertical bands of the cist, are stamped with moulds; the figures of animals on the two middle zones of the cist have been cut out and their inner lines engraved. The motives "both of the figures and of the other ornamentation evidently originated in Hither Asia. The tomb at Praeneste, in which the cist was found, belongs to the second half of the seventh or the first of the sixth century B.C., ...