Of bracelets of primitive work are a famous pair in the British Museum, which were discovered in a tomb at Cervetri (Cære). They are composed of thin plates of gold measuring 8 inches in length by 2¼ inches in width, divided into six sections, ornamented with scenes thoroughly Assyrian in character, indicated by lines of microscopic granulations ([Pl. VII, 4]).
Etruscan fibulæ of gold are generally formed of a short arc-shaped bow and a long sheath for the pin decorated with minute granular work. Upon the upper surface are often rows of small models of animals. Upon the sheath of a large early fibula found at Cervetri (Cære), and now in the British Museum, is a double row of twenty-four standing lions ([Pl. VII, 1]). The bow of the later fibulæ is sometimes in the form of a single figure, as that of a crouching lion. A considerable number of small fibulæ of this type appear to have been worn in rows down the seam of the dress. Two series of these, the one numbering twenty-one and the other thirty-nine, both found in a tomb at Vulci, are in the Louvre.
The Etruscans appear to have had a special love for rings; every finger, including the thumb, was covered with them, and a considerable number have been discovered in the tombs. The majority are composed of scarabs mounted much in the same style as those of the Egyptians. One of the finest Etruscan rings in the British Museum is formed by two lions, whose bodies make up the shank, their heads and fore-paws and supporting a bezel in filigree which holds the signet stone—a small scarabæus charged with a lion regardant. Another remarkable class of Etruscan rings has large oval bezels measuring upwards of an inch and a half across. These are set with an engraved gem, and have wide borders ornamented with various designs. An example in the British Museum shows a pattern formed of dolphins and waves.
CHAPTER IV
ROMAN JEWELLERY
THE foundation of the designs of Roman jewellery is to be found among the ornaments of the ancient Latin and Etruscan races which Rome subdued. That there is considerable resemblance also between Roman and Greek jewellery is natural, for the Romans, having plundered first Sicily and Southern Italy, and then Greece itself, induced Greek workmen with more refined instincts than their own to eke out a precarious living as providers of luxurious ornaments. It is worthy of remark that, owing to various causes, Greek and Etruscan jewellery has survived in considerably greater quantity than has that from the much more luxurious times of the Roman Empire.
It is customary to associate Roman jewellery with a degree of luxury which has not been surpassed in ancient or modern times. Roman moralists, satirists, and comic poets refer again and again to the extravagance of their own day. The first named, from a sombre point of view, condemn the present to the advantage of the past; and the others, with a distorted view, study exceptional cases, and take social monstrosities as being faithful representations of the whole of society. Under the Republic nearly all ornaments were worn for official purposes, and the wearing of precious stones was prohibited except in rings; but in imperial times they were worn in lavish profusion, and successive emperors, by a series of sumptuary laws, attempted to check the progress of this extravagance. Many instances might be quoted of excessive luxury in the use of precious stones, like that of the lady described by Pliny, who at a simple betrothal ceremony was covered with pearls and emeralds from head to foot. Yet Roman luxury was not without its parallel in later ages. For in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we read how at court the women carried their whole fortunes in a single dress. Further, as far as can be judged, the personal ornaments of the ancients were for the most part subject to much less frequent change of fashion than is inevitable under the social conditions of more modern times.
With regard to ornaments of the head, diadems and fillets were much worn. Ladies of the Roman Empire dressed their hair in the most elaborate manner, and adorned it with pearls, precious stones, and other ornaments. For fixing their head-dresses, and for arranging the hair, they made use of long hair-pins. A gold specimen preserved in the British Museum is upwards of eight inches in length; it has an octagonal shaft crowned with a Corinthian capital, on which stands a figure of Aphrodite ([Pl. VIII, 3]).