form of the conquered, and continued to use it. A Persian cylinder seal of Darius (probably about 500 B.C.) in the British Museum shows the king in his chariot, transfixing a lion with his arrows, in a palm wood. Above is the winged emblem of the Persian deity Ahuramazda. The inscription gives the name and titles of Darius in the Persian, Scythic and Babylonian languages. The style is accurate and minute. The idea of the lion hunt is borrowed from the Assyrian monuments, but the engraver has been careful to make the necessary changes of costume and treatment. The cylinder was, as might be anticipated, imitated to a certain extent by peoples of the Eastern world in touch with Babylonia. It occurs in Armenia, Media and Elam. It has been found in Crete (British School Annual, viii. p. 77) and is frequent in the early Cypriote deposits. In some instances it has been found unfinished and therefore must be supposed to be of local manufacture. Sometimes a direct imitation of cuneiform characters occurs on the Cypriote cylinders. The same form was also employed by the Phoenicians (about the 8th century7th century B.C.). By the Greeks and Etruscans it was used, but only rarely, and by way of exception. Egypt. We must go back to the remotest periods for the origin of intaglio engraving in Egypt. Recent discoveries of tombs of the earliest dynasties at Abydos and Nagada have thrown much light on the early stages of Egyptian art, and have revealed the remarkable fact that in Egypt (as in Babylonia) the cylinder was the earliest form used for the purpose of a seal. The cylinders that have been found are comparatively few in number; but a large number of jar-stoppings of clay are preserved on which cylinder designs have been rolled off while the clay was still soft. Such early incised cylinders as are extant are made either of hard wood or (as in an instance in the British Museum) of stone. The identity of form has been thought to indicate a connexion with Babylonia, but none can be traced in the designs of the respective cylinders. The Egyptians of the earliest dynasties had an admirable command of hard stones, as shown by their beads and stone vases, but with the exception of the cylinders quoted they are not known to have applied their skill to the production of intaglios. At this early period the scarab (or beetle) was still unknown as a gem-form. It was only about the time of the 4th dynasty that the scarab (q.v.) was first introduced, and gradually took the place of the cylinder as the prevailing shape. The Scarabaeus sacer (Egyptian, Kheperer), rolling its eggs in a ball of mud, became the accepted emblem of the sun-god, and so the form had an amuletic value. Scarabs of obsidian and crystal date back to the 4th dynasty. Others, coarse and uninscribed, belong to the beginning of the first Theban empire. After the 18th dynasty they are counted by thousands. While the beetle form was naturalistically treated, the flat surface underneath was well adapted to receive a hieroglyphic sign. The scarabs, however, are by no means the only product of the art. We have also figures of all kinds in the round and in intaglio statuettes, figures of animals and of deities, and sacred emblems such as the ankh (or crux ansata) and the eye. Among interesting variations from the scarab form is the oblong intaglio of green jasper in the Louvre (Gazette arch., 1878, p. 41) with a design on both sides. It represents on the obverse Tethmosis (Thothmes) II. (1800 B.C.) slaying a lion, and identified by his cartouche. On the reverse we have the same king drawing his bow against his enemies from a war chariot. The scarabs of Egypt though uninteresting in themselves, considered as examples of engraving, have this accidental importance in the history of art, that they furnished the Phoenicians with a model which they were able to improve as regards the intaglio by a more free spirit of design, gathered partly from Egypt and partly from Assyria. The scarab thus improved exercised a lasting influence on the later history, since, as will be seen below, it was adopted and modified both by Greeks and Etruscans. Engraved Gems in the Bible.-While the Phoenicians have left actual specimens to show with what skill they could adopt the systems of gem-engraving prevailing at their time in Egypt and Assyria, the Israelites, on the other hand, have left records to prove, if not their skill, at least the estimation in which they held engraved gems. "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond " (Jerem. xvii. 1). To pledge his word Judah gave Tamar his signet, with its cord for suspension, and staff (Gen. xxxviii. 18); whence if this passage be compared with the frequent use of "seal" in a metaphorical sense in the Bible, and with the usage of the Babylonians of carrying a seal with an emblem engraved on it recorded by Herodotus, it may be concluded that among the Israelites also every man of mark at least wore a signet. Their acquaintance with the use of seals in Egypt and Assyria is seen in the statement that Pharaoh gave Joseph his signet ring as a badge of investiture (Gen. xli. 42), and that the stone which closed the den of lions was sealed by Darius with his own signet and with the signet of his lords (Daniel vi. 17). Then as to the stones which were most prized, Ezekiel (xxviii. 13), speaking of the prince of Tyre, mentions "the sardius, the topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald and the carbuncle," stones which again occur in that most memorable of records, the description of the breastplate of the high priest FIG. 1.-Jewish High Priest's Breastplate. (Exodus xxviii. 16-21, and xxxix. 8-14). Twelve stones grouped in four rows, each with three specimens, may be arranged on a square, so as to have the rows placed either vertically or horizontally. If they are to cover the whole square, then, unless the gold mounts supplied the necessary compensation, they must be cut in an oblong form, and if the names engraved on them are to run lengthwise, as is the manner of Assyrian cylinders, then the stones, to be legible, must be grouped in four horizontal rows of three each. There is in fact no reason to suppose that the gems of the breastplate were in any other form than that of cylinders such as abounded to the knowledge of the Israelites, with this possibility, however, that they may have been cut lengthways into half-cylinders like a fragmentary one of sard in the British Museum, which has been mounted in bronze, and, as a remarkable exception, has been set with three small precious stones now missing. It could not have been a seal, because of this setting, and because the inscription is not reversed. The names of the twelve tribes, not their standards, as has been thought, may have been engraved in this fashion, just as on the two onyx stones in the preceding verses (Exodus xxviii. 9-11), where there can be no question but that actual names were incised. On these two stones the order of the names was according to primogeniture, and this, it is likely, would apply to the breastplate also. The accompanying diagram will show how the stones, supposing them to have been cylinders or half-cylinders, may have been arranged consistently with the descriptions of the Septuagint. In the arrangement of Josephus | the excavations have shown that the Cretan lapidaries were (iii. 7. 5) the jasper is made to change places with the sapphire, the amethyst with the agate, and the onyx with the beryl, while our version differs partly in the order and partly in the names of the stones; but probably in all these accounts the names had in some cases other meanings than those which they now carry. It must be remembered that we have two series of equivalents, namely, the Hebrew compared with the Septuagint, and the Greek words of the Septuagint compared with the modern names, which in many cases, though derived from the Greek, have changed their applications. From the fact that to each tribe was assigned a stone of different colour, it may be taken that in each case the colour was one which belonged prescriptively to the tribe and was symbolic, as in Assyria, where the seven planets appropriated each a special colour (see Brandis in Hermes, 1867, p. 259 seq., and de Saulcy, Revue archéologique, 1869, ii. p. 91; and compare Revelation xxi. 12, 13, where the twelve gates, which have the names of the twelve tribes written upon them, are grouped in four threes, and 19, 20, where the twelve precious stones of the walls are given]. The precious stones which occur among the cylinders of the British Museum are sard, emerald, lapis lazuli (sapphire of the ancients), agate, onyx, jasper and rock crystal. largely employed in the working of gems for purposes of decoration. Fragments of lapis lazuli and crystal for inlaying (the crystals having coloured designs on their lower surfaces) were found in the throne room at Cnossus; the royal gaming-board, also from the palace at Cnossus, had inlaid crystal disks and plaques. The workshop of a lapidary, with unfinished works in marble, steatite, jasper and beryl, was also found within the precincts of the palace (Brit. School Annual, vii. pp. 20, 77). Examples were also found of work in relief, substantially anticipating the art of cameo-cutting. The area over which the Cretan influence extended was wide. Its manifestations in Greek lands proper, first revealed by Schliemann's excavation of the royal tombs of Mycenae, ran parallel with and outlasted the later periods of the Cretan culture to which it stood in close relation (see AEGEAN CIVILIZATION). Its gems and intaglio works in gold are known to us from the finds at Mycenae, and at analogous sites, such as Menidi, Vaphio and Ialysus. They have much in common with the finer class of Cretan Gem-Engraving in Greek Lands.-We must now turn to the his- stones already described. The entory of gem-engraving in Greek lands. The excavations in Crete in graved gems fall principally into the first years of the 20th century revealed a previously unknown two groups in respect of form, FIG. 2.-Lenticular Rockculture, which lasted on the lowest computation for more than namely, the lenticular (or lentoid) Crystal from Ialysus. (Brit. Mus.) two thousand years, and was only interrupted by the national stones already mentioned, and (more upheavals which preceded the opening of Greek history proper. rarely) glandular stones, so called from their resemblance to a (See CRETE; Archaeology; and AEGEAN CIVILIZATION.) Through-glans or sling bolt. A Cretan fresco shows a figure wearing an out the whole period the products of the gem-engraver occupy agate lenticular stone suspended from the left wrist. The finer an important place among the surviving remains. It must suffice, specimens of the Aegean gems are engraved with the wheel and however, in this place to indicate the chief groups of stones. the point in hard stones, such as chalcedony, amethyst, sard, The earliest engraved stones of Minoan Crete are three-sided rock-crystal and haematite. A lapidary's workshop similar prism seals, made of a soft steatite, native in S.E. Crete (Journ. to that at Cnossus has been found at Mycenae, with a store of of Hellenic Studies, xvii. p. 328). These are incised with pictorial unused gems, and an unfinished lenticular stone (Ephemeris signs evidently belonging to a rudimentary hieroglyphic system, Archaiologikè, 1897, p. 121). The characteristic of the Aegean and are dated before 3000 B.C. At a period placed by A. J. engraver is the free expression of living forms. His subjects are Evans between 2800 and 2200 the method was fully systematized figures of animals, men and demons in combat, and heraldic and employed on the signets, as well as on tablets and other compositions recalling the Gate of Lions at Mycenae. It was materials. This development of the hieroglyphic system was almost inevitable that the scarab should be found in the Cretan accompanied by an increasing power of working in hard material, and Aegean deposits, but in such cases we have the Egyptian and cornelian and chalcedony superseded soft steatite (Journ. scarab directly imported, and not, as at a later period, nonof Hell. Studies, xvii. p. 334). Egyptian adaptations of the form. The cylinder also (except in Cyprus, the borderland between cast and west) only occurs as an importation, and not as a currently manufactured shape. Towards 2000 B.C. a highly developed linear form began to supersede the pictorial signs. It is abundant on the tablets, but the gems thus inscribed are comparatively rare. The linear form in turn died out some six hundred years later. The signs of the pictorial script incised on the gems are representations of objects, expressed with precision, but giving little scope for the higher side of the gem-engraver's art. Simultaneously, however, with the use of the script, a high degree of skill was acquired by the engravers in rendering animal and human forms. Scenes occur of ritual observance, hunting, animal life, and strange compounded forms of demons. The excavations did not yield a large number of original gems of this class, but a great number of clay sealings from such signets were discovered. That they were synchronous with the use of the forms of script described above is proved by the fact that in the palace at Cnossus deposits were found, both in the linear and the hieroglyphic script, sealed with these signets, the scal impressions being again endorsed in the script (Brit. School Annual, xi. pp. 56, 62). For a remarkable group of sealings found at Zakro see Journ. of Hell. Studies, xxii. pll. 6-10. The finest naturalistic engravings are placed towards the close of the "Mid-Minoan" and beginning of the "Late-Minoan" periods (about 2200-1800 B.C.). During the progress of the "LateMinoan" period the subjects tended to assume a more formal and heraldic character. The forms of stones in favour were the disk convex on each side (lenticular or lentoid stones), and during the "Mid-Minoan" period, elaborate signets in the form of modern fob-seals. Apart from the use of intaglios for sealing, The "Island Gems."-The Acgcan culture was swept away probably by that dimly seen upheaval which separated Mycenaean from historical Greece, and which is com- Sard from lalysus. FIG. 3.-Lenticular monly known as the Dorian invasion. One (Brit. Mus.) of the few facts which indicate a certain continuity of tradition in later Greece is this, that we again find the same characteristic forms, the glandular and lenticular stones, in the cemeteries, of Melos and elsewhere. It is only recently that archaeologists have learnt to distinguish between the later lenticular and glandular stones" of the Greek Islands," as they are commonly called, and those of the Aegean age. Engravings of the later class are worked in soft materials only, such as steatite. They have not the power of expressing action peculiar to the Aegean artist. In general, the continuity of tradition between the gems of the Mycenaean and the historical periods is in respect of shape rather than of art. The subjects are for the most part decorative forms (the Gryphon, the winged Sphinx, the winged horse, &c.) in course of development into characters of Greek myth. The Phoenicians and the Greeks.-About the end of the 8th and beginning of the 7th century B.C. the Phoenicians began to exercise a powerful influence as intermediaries between Egypt and Assyria and the Mediterranean. Porcelain and other imitations of Egyptian ornaments, and especially of Egyptian | scarabs, are found in great numbers on such sites as Amathus in Cyprus, Camirus in Rhodes, in Etruria, and at Tharros in Sardinia. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are imitated with mistakes, the figures introduced are stiff and formal, the animals as a rule heraldic. The scarab form, which in Egypt had had its sacred significance, was now become nothing more than a convenient shape for an object of jewelry or for the reverse side of a stone. It was adopted from the Phoenicians both by Greeks and Etruscans. By the Greeks, with whom we are at present concerned, its use was occasional, and about 500 B.C. it was superseded by the scarabaeoid. Under this name two forms, somewhat similar but independent in origin, are usually grouped without sufficient discrimination. The scarabaeoid proper is a simplification of the scarab, effected by the omission of all details of the beetle. But many of the stones known as scarabaeoids, with a flat and oval base and a convex back, are in respect of their form probably of North Syrian origin (so Furtwängler). The earliest examples of archaic Greek gem-engraving (other than the later "Island gems" already described) are works of Ionian art. They show a desire, only limited by imperfect power of expression, to represent the human figure, though the particular theme may be a god or other mythical personages. By the beginning of the 5th century the engravers had reached the FIG. 6.-Head (Brit. of a quadriga on its face (Zeitschrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, 1873, pp. 401-411), whence it is not unreasonable to conclude that this scarab in fact represented the famous seal of Polycrates. Shortly after 600 B.C. there was a law of Solon's forbidding engravers to retain impressions of the seals they made, and this date would fall in roundly with that of Theodorus and Mnesarchus, as if there had in fact been at that time a special activity and unusual skill. That the use of seals had been general long before, in Cretan and Mycenaean times, we have seen above, and it is singular to find, as Pliny points out (xxxiii. 4), no direct mention of seals in Homer, not even in the passage (Iliad, vi. 168) where Bellerophon himself carries the tablets on which were written the orders against his life. From the time of Theodorus to that of Pyrgoteles in the 4th century B.C. is a long blank as to names, but not altogether as to gems, the production of which may be judged to have been carried on assiduously from the constant necessity of seals for every variety of purpose. The references to them in Aristophanes, for example, and the lists of them in the ancient inventories of treasures in the Parthenon and the Asclepicion at Athens confirm this frequent usage during the period in question. The mention of a public seal for authenticating state documents also becomes frequent in the inscriptions. In the reign of Alexander the Great we meet the name of Pyrgoteles, of whom Pliny records that he was no doubt the most famous engraver of his time, and that Alexander decreed that Pyrgoteles alone should engrave his portrait. Nothing else is known of Pyrgoteles. A portrait of Alexander in the British Museum (No. 2307), purporting to be signed by him, is palpably modern. From literary sources we also learn the names of the engravers Apollonides, Chronius and Dioscorides, but the date of the lastmentioned only is certain. He is said to have made an excellent portrait of Augustus, which was used as a seal by that emperor in the latter part of his reign and also by his successors. Inscriptions on extant gems make it probable that Dioscorides was a native of Aegeae in Cilicia, and that three sons, Hyllos, Herophilus and Eutyches, followed their father's occupation. We have also a few scattered notices of amateurs and collectors of gems, but it will be seen that for the whole period of classical antiquity the literary notices give little aid, and we must return to the gems. FIG. 4. Victory. FIG. 5.-Citharist. Early Greek Scarab. Early Greek Scara(Brit. Mus.) baeoid. (Brit. Mus.) point of full development, and the scarabaeoids of the time embody its results. As an example of fine scarabaeoids the Woodhouse intaglio of a seated citharist (fig.5; Cat. of Gems in Brit. Mus. No. 555) may be quoted as perhaps the very finest Early Inscribed Gems.-Various early gems are inscribed with example of Greek gem-engraving that has come down to us. It proper names, which may be supposed to indicate either the would stand early in the 5th century B.C., a date which would artist or the owner of the gem. In some cases there is no also suit the head of Eos from Ithome in Messenia (fig. 6). The ambiguity, e.g. on a scarab is inscribed, "I am the seal of Thersis. number, however, of fine scarabaeoids known to us has been Do not open me "; and a scarabaeoid (fig. 7) is inscribed, "Syries considerably increased in recent years. They are marked by a made me." But when we have the name alone, the general broad and simple treatment, which attains a large effect without principle on which we must distinguish beexcessive minuteness or laboured detail. In these respects the tween owner and artist is that the name of style has something in common with the reliefs of the 5th century. the owner is naturally meant to be conLiterary History.-The literary references to the early gem-spicuous (as in a gem in the British Museum engravers are no longer of the same importance as before in view inscribed in large letters with the name of of the fuller knowledge we possess as to the quality of early gem- Isagor[as]), while the name of an artist is engraving, but it is necessary that they should be taken into naturally inconspicuous and subordinate to the design. account. The records of gem-engravers in Greece begin in the island of Samos, where Mnesarchus, the father of the philosopher Pythagoras, earned by his art more of praise than of wealth. Not to carry the image of a god on your seal," was a saying of Pythagoras; and, whatever his reason for it may have been, it is interesting to observe him founding a maxim on his father's profession of gem-engraving (Diogenes Laert. viii. 1, 17). From Samos also came Theodorus, who made for Polycrates the seal of emerald (Herodotus iii. 41), which, according to the curious story, was cast in vain into the deep sea on purpose to be lost. That the design on it was a lyre, as is stated in one authority, is unlikely, at least if we accept Benndorf's ingenious interpretation of Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 83). He has suggested that the portrait statue of Theodorus made by himself was in all probability a figure holding in one hand a graving tool, and in the other, not, as previously supposed, a quadriga so diminutive that a By could cover it with its wings, but a scarab with the engraving FIG. 7-Scarabaeoid by Syrics. (Brit. Mus.) The early engravers known to us by their signatures are: Syries, who was author of the modified scarab in the British Museum, mentioned above, with a satyr's head in place of the beetle, and a citharist on the base-a work of the middle of the 6th century; Semon, who engraved a black jasper scarab now at Berlin, with a nude woman kneeling at a fountain filling her pitcher, of the close of the 6th century; Epimenes, who was the author of an admirable chalcedony scarabaeoid of a nude youth restraining a spirited horse-formerly in the Tyszkiewicz Collection, and of about the beginning of the 5th century. But better known to us than any of these artists is the 5th-century engraver, Dexamenus of Chios, of whose work four examples1 survive, viz.: For Nos. 1-4 see Furtwängler, pl. 14; for Nos. 2-4 see Evans, Rev. archéologique, xxxii. (1898) pl. 8. 1. A chalcedony scarabaeoid from Greece, in the Fitzwilliam | the cable border round the design, but the border continued in Museum at Cambridge, with a lady at her toilet, attended by her maid. Inscribed AEZAMENO2, and with the name of the lady, ΜΙΚΗΣ. 2. An agate with a stork standing on one leg, inscribed ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ simply. 3. A chalcedony with the figure of a stork flying, and inscribed in two lines, the letters carefully disposed above each other, ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕ ΧΙΟΣ. 4. A gem, apparently by the same Dexamenus, is a cornelian formerly belonging to Admiral Soteriades in Athens, and subsequently in the collection of Dr Arthur Evans. It has a portrait head, bearded and inscribed ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕ. FIG. 8. Greek Sard. 5th Cent. The design of a stork flying occurs on an agate scarab in the British Museum, from the old Cracherode Collection,and therefore beyond all suspicion of having been copied from the more recently discovered Kertch gem. For the period immediately following that early prime to which the gems above described belong, our materials are less copious. Some of the finest examples are derived from the Greek tombs in the Crimea and South Russia. Reckoned among the best of the B.C. (Brit. Mus.) Crimean gems, and that is equivalent to saying among the best of all gems, are the following: (1) a burnt scarabaeoid with an eagle carrying off a hare; (2) a gem with scarab border and the figure of a youth seated playing on the trigonon, very much resembling the Woodhouse intaglio (both engraved, Compte rendu, 1871, pl. vi. figs. 16, 17). In these, and in almost all Greek gems belonging to this period of excellence, the material is of indifferent quality, consisting of agate, chalcedony or cornelian, just as in the older specimens. Brilliant colour and translucency are as yet not a necessary element, and accordingly the design is worked out solely with a view to its own artistic merit. The scarab tends to die out. The scarabaeoid in its turn is abandoned for the simple ring stone. The subjects chosen take by degrees a different character. Aphrodite (nude), FIG. 9.-Amethyst Pendant. (Brit. Mus.) Eros, children and women tend to replace the older and severer themes. The motives of 4th-century sculpture appear by degrees on the gems. Etruscan Gems.-At this point it is convenient to discuss the gem-engraving of the Etruscans, which came into being towards the close of the archaic period of Greek art. In the early Etruscan deposits, such as that of the Polledrara tomb in the British Museum (towards 600 B.C.), we find nothing except Phoenician imports of porcelain or stone scarabs, both strongly Egyptian in character. During the 6th century a few of the semi-Egyptian stones of Sardinia make their appearance. But in the latter part of the century these oriental products tend to die out, and we have in their place the native works of Etruscan artists. These engravings stand in the closest relation to Greek works of the close of the 6th century and many imported Greek scarabs also occur. The Etruscan scarab has its beetle form more minutely engraved than that of the Greeks. It is further distinguished in the better examples, alike from the Greek and the Egyptian form, by a small border of a sort of petal ornament round the lower edge of the beetle. Like the earlier Greek scarabs it has use in Etruria when it had been abandoned in Greece. The scarabaeoid form does not occur in Etruscan deposits. Etruscan engraving begins when Greek art was approaching maturity, with studies, sometimes stiff and cramped, of the heroic nude form. Some of the Greek deities such as Athena and Hermes occur, together with the winged personages of Greek mythology. To the heroic types the names of Greek legend are attached, with modifications of form, such as TTTE for Tydeus, and KAIINE for Capaneus. Sometimes the names are appropriate and sometimes they are assigned at random. The subjects include certain favourite incidents in the Trojan and Theban cycles (e.g. the death of Capaneus); myths of Heracles; athletes, horsemen, a few scenes of daily life. Certain schemes of composition are frequent. In particular, a figure too large for the field, standing and bending over, is made to serve for many types. The engraving of the finer Etruscan gems is minute and precise, marked with elegance and command of the material. Its fault is its want of original inspiration. Special mention must be made of a very numerous group of cornelian scarabs, roughly engraved for the most part with cup-shaped sinkings (whence they are known as gems a globolo tondo) roughly joined together by furrows. Notwithstanding their apparent rudeness, these. gems are shown, by the conditions in which they are found, to be comparatively late works of the 4th century. Furtwängler ingeniously suggests that the rough execution was intended to emphasize the shining surfaces of the cup-sinkings, rather than to produce any particular intaglio subject. (For an elaborate classification of the Etruscan scarabs see Furtwängler, Geschichte, p. 170.) The Cameos.-After the beginning of the regal period, in the 4th century B.C., the introduction of more splendid materials from the East was turned to good account by the development of the cameo, i.e. of gem-carving in relief (for the origin of the word see CAMEO). But in its simpler forms the principle of the cameo necessarily dates from the beginning of the art. Thus a lion in rock-crystal was found in the very early royal tomb of Nagada (de Morgan, Recherches, Tombeau de Negadah, p. 193). The Egyptian scarab, on its rounded side, had been naturalistically carved in relief in beetle form. Steatite engravings in relief (notably the harvest festival vase from Hagia Triada) were found in the Cretan deposits. Subjects are found carved in the round in hard stone in Mycenaean graves. When we come to historical Greece and to Etruria the cameo of later times is anticipated by various attempts to modify the traditional form of the scarab. An example in cornelian was found at Orvieto in 1874 in a tomb along with vases dating from the beginning of the 5th century B.C., and it will be seen from the engraving of this gem (Arch. Zeit., 1877, pl. xi. fig. 3) that, while the design on the face is in intaglio, the half-length figure of a Gorgon on the back is engraved in relief. Compare a cornelian fragment, apparently cut from the back of a scarabaeoid, now in the British Museum. As further examples of the same rare form of cameo, the following gems in the British Museum may be mentioned: (1) a cornelian cut from back of a scarabaeoid, with head of Gorgon surrounded by wings; (2) cornelian scarabaeoid: Gorgon running to left; on face of the gem an intaglio of Thetis giving armour to Achilles; (3) steatite scarabaeoid, already mentioned, signed by Syries, head of a satyr, full face, with intaglio of citharist. There is, however, no evidence at present available to show that the cameo proper had been introduced in Greece before the time of Alexander. The earliest examples found in known conditions are derived from Crimean tombs of the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Among the most splendid of ancient cameos are those at St Petersburg and Vienna, each representing a monarch of the Diadochi and his consort (Furtwängler, pl. 53). There is much controversy as to the persons represented, but the cameos are probably works of the 3rd century. The materials which ancient artists used for cutting into cameos were chiefly those siliceous minerals which, under a variety of names, present various strata or bands of two or more distinct colours. The minerals, under different names, are essentially the chalcedonic variety of quartz, and the differences | work are the Brunswick vase (at Brunswick), with the subject of colour they present are due to the presence of variable proportions of iron and other foreign ingredients. These banded stones, when cut parallel to the layers of different colours, and when only two coloured bands-white and black, or sometimes white and black and brown-are present, are known as onyxes; but when they have with the onyx bands layers of cornelian or sard, they are termed sardonyxes. The sardonyx, which was the favourite stone of ancient cameo-engravers, and the material in which their masterpieces were cut, was procured from India, and the increased intercourse with the East after the death of Alexander the Great had a marked influence on the development of the art. Akin in their nature to the great regal cameos, which from the nature of the case are cut on a nearly plane surface, are the cups and vases cut out of a homogeneous stone and therefore capable of being worked in the round. A few examples of such works survive. The most famous are the Farnese Tazza and the cup of the Ptolemies. The Tazza, which is now in the National Museum at Naples, was bought by Lorenzo de' Medici from Pope Paul II. in 1471. It is a large shallow bowl of sardonyx, 8 in. in diameter On its exterior surface is a Gorgoncion upon an aegis; in the interior is an allegorical design, relating to the Nile flood. The cup of the Ptolemies, formerly known as the cup of St Denis, is preserved in the Cabinet des Médailles of the French Bibliothèque Nationale. It is a cup 4 in. high and 5 in. in diameter, carved out of oriental sardonyx, and richly decorated with Dionysiac emblems and attributes in relief. The Cameo in the Roman Empire.-During the 1st century of the empire the engraver's art alike in cameo and in intaglio was at a high degree of excellence. The artist in cameo took full| advantage of his rich opportunities in the way of sumptuous materials, and of the requirements of an imperial court. The two most famous examples of this art which have come down to the present day are the Great Agate of the Sainte Chapelle in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Augustus Cameo in the Vienna Collection. The former was pledged among other valuables in 1244 by Baldwin II. of Constantinople to Saint Louis. It is mentioned in 1344 as "Le Camahieu," having been sent in that year to Rome for the inspection of Pope Clement VI. It is a sardonyx of five layers of irregular shape, like all classical gems, measuring 12 in. by 10 in. It represents on its upper part the deified members of the Julian house. The centre is occupied with the reception FIG. 10. Actaeon. Frag- of Germanicus on his return from his ment of Sardonyx Cameo. great German campaign by the em(Brit. Mus.) peror Tiberius and his mother Livia. The lower division is filled with a group of captives in attitudes expressive of woe and deep dejection. The Vienna gem (Gemma augustca), an onyx of two layers measuring 8 in. by 71, is a work of still greater artistic interest. The upper portion is occupied with an allegorical representation of the coronation of Augustus, the emperor being represented as Jupiter with Livia as the goddess Roma at his side. In the composition deities of Earth and Sea, and several members of the family of Augustus, are introduced; on the exergue or lower portion are Roman soldiers preparing a trophy, barbarian captives and female figures. This gem was in the 15th century at the abbey of St Sernin at Toulouse. According to tradition it had been placed there by Charlemagne. It came into the possession of the emperor Rudolph II. in the 16th century for the enormous sum of 12,000 gold ducats. The principal cameo in the collection of the British Museum was acquired at the final dispersion of the Marlborough Collection in 1899. It is a sardonyx measuring 8 in. by 6 in., and appears to represent a Roman emperor and empress in the forms of Serapis and Isis. Here also, in imperial times as in the Hellenistic period, side by side with the great cameos, we meet with works carved out in the round. Noted examples of such of Triptolemus; the Berlin vase with the lustration of a new-born imperial prince; and the Waddesdon vase in the British Museum, with a vine in relief set in a rich enamelled Renaissance mount. Hardly less precious than the cameos in sardonyx were the imitations carved out of coloured glass The material was not costly, but its extreme fragility made the work of extreme difficulty. Examples of such work are the Barberini or Portland vase, deposited in the British Museum, with scenes supposed to be connected with the story of Peleus and Thetis; and the " vase of blue glass " from Pompeii, in the museum at Naples (see Mau and Kelsey, p. 408). The world's great cameos, which are hardly more than a dozen in number, have not been found by excavation. They remained as precious objects in imperial and ecclesiastical treasuries and passed thence to the royal and national collections of modern Europe. The Intaglio in the Roman Empire. The art of engraving in intaglio was also at a high level of excellence in the beginning of the Roman empire. This is to be inferred alike from the admirable portraits of the 1st century A.D., and from the number of signed gems bearing Roman artists' names, such as Aulus, Gnaius and the like, which could hardly belong to any other period. It is impossible, however, to found any argument upon the artists' signatures without taking into account the intricate questions of authenticity which are discussed in the following section. Signed Gems.The number of gems which have, or purport to have, the name of the artist inscribed upon them is very large. A great many of the supposed signatures are modern forgeries, dating from the period between 1724 (when the book of Stosch, Gemmae antiquae caelatae, scalplorum nominibus insignitae, first drew general attention to the subject) and 1833, when the multitude of forged signatures (about 1800 in number) in the collection of Prince Poniatowski made the whole pursuit ridiculous. It is known, however, that forged signatures were current before 1724 (see Stosch, p. xxi.), and in the period immediately following they were very numerous. Thus Laurence Natter (Méthode de graver en pierres fines (1754), p. xxx.) confesses that, whenever desired, he made copies. For example, he copied a Venus (Brit. Mus. No. 2296), converting the figure into a Danaë and affixing the name of Aulos which he found on the Venus. Cf. Mariette, Traité (1750), i. p. 101. The question which of the multitude of supposed signatures can be accepted as genuine has been a subject of prolonged and intricate controversy. In the period immediately following the Poniatowski forgeries the extreme height of scepticism is represented by Koehler, who only acknowledged five gems (Kochler, iii. p. 206) as having genuine signatures. In recent years the subject has been principally dealt with by Furtwängler, whose conclusion is to admit a considerable number of gems rejected by his predecessors. It must suffice here to point out a few general principles. In the first place a certain number of gems recently discovered have inscriptions which are undoubtedly genuine and which record the names of the engravers. The form of the signature may be a nominative with a verb, a nominative without a verb or a genitive. The artists in this class are Syries, Dexamenus, Epimenes and Semon, mentioned above, and a few others. Another group of gems which must be accepted consists of stones whose known history goes back to a period at which a forged inscription was impossible. Thus a bust of Athena in the Berlin Collection, signed by Eutyches, was seen by Cyriac of Ancona in 1445. A glass cameo signed by Herophilus, son of Dioscorides, now at Vienna, was, in the 17th century, in the monastery of Echternach, where it had probably been from old times. The portrait of Julia, daughter of Titus, by Euodos (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale) was formerly a part of a reliquary presented to the abbey of St Denis by Charles the Bold. Another group of undoubtedly genuine signatures occurs on cameos (in stone and paste) which have the inscriptions in relief, and therefore as part of the original design. Such are the works of Athenion, and of Quintus, son of Alexas. |