founded, and the ample manner in which they were acknowledged both during her lifetime, and after her decease, may be accounted for in several ways. She was the widow of Drusus, the idol of the Roman people, and whose popularity went on increasing after his death through the very unpopularity of his brother, Tiberius. She was the mother of the equally beloved and equally regretted Germanicus; and she had the credit of saving the empire and the Cæsarian line by her detection of the conspiracy of Sejanus at the very moment it was ripe for execution. To the last-named service allusion seems to be made in the sense of the CONSTANTIA of the legend on the medal already quoted. She received the highest honours from her grandson, Caligula, upon his accession to the empire, although he is accused of having afterwards, in his capricious madness, hastened her death—a gratuitous crime, and probably laid to his charge on no surer grounds than his bad reputation. When her son Claudius succeeded his short-lived nephew, Antonia obtained from his filial piety a large share of the honours he paid to the deceased members of his family. As this Cæsar (the James I. of antiquity), besides his love of books, was also a patron of the glyptic art—for Pliny notices his fondness for the sardonyx,[1] evidently meaning that gem in the camei, of which so many with his and his wives' portraits are still preserved—it seems to follow naturally that his mother also should have received under him her part in this most imperishable kind of monument. I am not ignorant that it has been the traditional custom to attribute all cameo-heads of this particular type to Agrippina, wife of Germanicus; but its appearance on the Gemma Augustea, executed before her birth, as well as on the medal of Antonia (pointed out here for the first time) are sufficient to overthrow such an identification.
It may perhaps be acceptable to such of my readers as are unacquainted with ancient glyptics to explain the composition of the paste before us, and also the process of its fabrication. All the antique imitative lazulite that has come under my examination is of the same close-grained texture, and the same shade of light blue (or lavender colour). Its hardness
- ↑ "Singulorum enim libido pretia singulis (gemmis) facit, præcipueque æmulatio, velut cum Claudius Cæsar smaragdos induebat vel sardonyches." (H. N. xxxvii. 23.) The emperor brought the sardonyx into fashion by wearing it alternately with the emerald, the gem the most valued of all in his day.
