The kind that was most generally employed for all but the meaner purposes, was not Castor but Samian or _terra sigillata_.[3] This ware is singularly characteristic of Roman-provincial art.

As I have said above, it is copied wholesale from Italian originals.

It is purely imitative and conventional; it reveals none of that delight in ornament, that spontaneousness in devising decoration and in working out artistic patterns which can clearly be traced in Late Celtic work.

It is simply classical, in an inferior degree.
[Footnote 1: Michaelis, Loeschke and others assume an early intercourse between the Mosel basin and eastern Europe, and thereby explain both a statue in Pergamene style which was found at Metz and appears to have been carved there and also the Neumagen sculptures.

As all these pieces were pretty certainly produced in Roman times, the early intercourse seems an inadequate cause.