Pliny the Elder (XXXVI.195) recounts the story that in the reign of Tiberius a method of glassmaking was invented which rendered it flexible and thus unshatterable. "The artist's workshop was completely destroyed for fear that the value of metals such as copper, silver and gold would otherwise be lowered. Such," adds Pliny, "is the story, which, however, has for a long period been current through frequent repetition rather than authentic." In Petronius's version, in Satyricon 51, the inventor is beheaded. Dio Cassius (LVII.57) tells the same tale.
--In Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline (pub. 1996), by Anne Glyn-Jones (1923-)
