gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, shell, ancient gems, Rome, Greece, ancient jewelry, rings

Martial makes one of his epigrams turn upon a joke, the meaning of which has never been satisfactorily explained: “Quod nutantia fronte perticata / Gestat pondera Masthlion superbus; / Aut grandis Ninus omnibus lacertis. / Septem quod pueros levat vel octo, / Res non difficilis mihi videtur; / Uno cum digito, vel hoc vel illo, / Portet Stella meus decem puellas.” “I don’t think it so wonderful a feat if Masthlion carries great weights upon a pole balanced on his forehead, or if big Ninus holds out seven or eight boys at once upon his outstretched arms, when my friend Stella can carry ten girls upon a single finger, either this one or that.” That the allusion is to a ring is evident enough, but in what sense this same ring was the equivalent to ten girls is the question to be answered. Raderus, an old commentator on Martial, quoted by Selmuth in his additions to the Antiqua deperdita et Nova reperta of the famous jurist Pancirollus, supposes the ring to have been set with a “Nature picture” of such a group, similar in kind to the celebrated agate of Pyrrhus, which also contained ten figures—Apollo and the Muses nine, each with her proper attribute, accurately depicted by the hand of Nature. This ingenious explanation of the old scholiast would have satisfied every requirement of the case (for such a wonderful production were certainly a suggestive theme for an epigrammatist), had it not been for another piece by the same hand, inspired beyond all doubt by the same remarkable jewel, and which proves that the question is not of one but of several gems, which for some sufficient cause were entitled “The Ten Maidens.”