and W, used in the names of Aetion and Agathemerus, by their recent shape cause us to refer these two artists to more modern periods; and the gem by Philemon, in the Vienna Collection, besides exhibiting the lunar-shaped sigma, C, in the name, has nothing whatever of the Archaic manner in its treatment.

In the next period, from Alexander to Augustus, Visconti suspects that all the works signed with the name of Alexander are to be assigned to Alessandro Il Greco, because the composition of the design shows a certain departure from the antique manner. For instance, amongst other details, the kind of fillet that appears on the back of his lion is never seen in truly ancient works, except upon victims, and such the lion was not; again, the abbreviation AAEZAN.E. for Aλežavdpos È is without any precedent, and even contrary to the usage of those times; and lastly, Vasari expressly mentions, amongst the works of Alessandro Cesati, a cameo of a child and a lion.

Pamphilus and Pharnaces are of quite uncertain date; nor is it probable that Polycletus of Sicyon was the author of the gem inscribed with that name, for his style as the pupil of Agelades, though correct, would still be somewhat stiff and exaggerated from his early date, anterior to Praxiteles. As however Pamphilus and Polycletus were equally famous-the one in painting, the other in statuary-it may be plausibly conjectured that the intagli inscribed with these names were copies of famous works by these masters, either pictures or bronze figures. The gem signed Apelles (falsely read Apsalus), might likewise be adduced in support of this theory.

Gems bearing the name of Pyrgoteles may similarly be all doubted with justice; and here an instance of a stone may be quoted, of incontestable antiquity, both as to the intaglio and

the name upon it. It is a Carnelian found near Rome in 1788; its subject, Hercules and the Hydra. The work was only mediocre; it was consequently judged by Visconti to be an ancient copy of a gem by Pyrgoteles. It passed into the Trivulzi Cabinet at Milan.

The age of Tryphon is fixed by the epigram of Addeus, a court-poet of the Ptolemies, already quoted under the head of "Beryl."

Of the Roman period, all the artists must be classed together from the times of Augustus to the commencement of the decline of art under Septimius Severus; for here, unless the date of the work is fixed by its presenting historical portraits, or else by notices of the artist in ancient writers, we are completely at a loss for other guides during the whole of this period; for if we take the mere excellence of the work itself, as the ground to form our judgment upon, the intaglio head of Antoninus Pius, in the Museum Capo di Monte, is by no means inferior to the most finished portraits of the first Cæsars.

In this same category ought likewise to be classed all the engravers having Roman names, such as Gnæus, Ælius, and Felix. Whatever may have been their native country, the excellence of their works ranks them in the Greek school, and they themselves adopt it as their own by signing their names in Greek letters and after the Greek fashion, omitting however that of their family; but for this there was a sufficient cause. These artists were doubtless Greeks, and the freedmen of great nobles and of the emperors, whose family name they assumed, according to the invariable rule, on their manumission; and hence we may conclude that Gnæus flourished under Pompey, Ælius in the reign of Hadrian, and similarly for the others who sign their Roman gentile names in Greek characters. Probably no work of Dioscorides equals

in sublimity the youthful Hercules of Gnæus in the Strozzi Cabinet; and this engraver, together with Aulus, Quintus, and Lucius, must be numbered amongst the Greek artists of the same period. An antique paste of the Barbarini Collection has the inscription AYAOC AAEZAEПOIEI; and hence we may conclude him to be the brother of Quintus, who upon another gem also styles himself, after the Greek fashion, "son of Alexander." This latter name of Quintus is probably the KOIMOC given by a mistake of the reading of the signature by Stosch and Bracci. Agathangelus is a false name added by a modern hand to an antique intaglio, according to Vettori, in his Dissertatio Glyptographica.' Agathopus and Epitynchanus also belong this class. There can be little doubt that these are the two persons bearing the same names described as "aurifices," or jewellers, in the sepulchral inscriptions of the household of Livia. Their epoch too is fixed by the intaglio head of Pompey the younger, on a gem in the Florentine Collection, engraved by Epitynchanus, and a cameo of Germanicus by Agathopus, belonging to the Strozzi. Probably a magnificent sard, the combat of Bellerophon with the Chimera, in the Azara Cabinet, signed EIII, is a work of the former engraver. I have also seen an admirable head of Germanicus on a very fine ruby-coloured Sard, also signed ЕПІ. This gem was once in the collection of Beckford, and had all the appearance of antiquity.

Of altogether uncertain date are Allion and Amphoterus; for as to the portrait of Rhetemalces, ascribed to the latter, it is extremely uncertain whom it really represents. The same may be said of Ammonius and Onesas. Concerning Apollonius and Athenion we have no sure data, yet as no characters of the more recent form, such as the W, appear in their signatures, this consideration, coupled with the superiority of their works, would induce us to place both in the first times of the

Roman empire. Aspasius also may be ranked among those of an uncertain but yet early period. Although his name is not engraved in such elegant characters as those of the two just mentioned, yet the fact of each of his three known works being executed in red Jasper would lead me to the same judgment; for assuredly the luxury of the Roman times would not have allowed such an artist to work in so common a stone as it had then become.

As for Aulus, the variety both of manner and of merit observable even in the indisputably antique gems, signed with this name, must be assigned either to forgery, or else the name, even when genuine and antique, may have been added to ancient copies of his actual works. The best and most authentic of all his productions is the Strozzi head of Esculapius, a profile of sublime beauty, where the name appears on a tablet. Whoever compares this head with the other works bearing the same signature will find it difficult to persuade himself that they are all originals from the same hand.3

Acmon is known to us by a single cameo, a portrait of Augustus, a profile-laureated head upon an onyx of two layers, Sard and Sapphirine, in the De la Turbie Cabinet. The work of this cameo is executed with infinite freedom and facility, so as to appear done entirely by the hand and not by the wheel-a peculiarity observable in many other antique camei. The name AKMON is engraved beneath the bust. From his style he may be concluded a pupil of Dioscorides. Cronius was apparently anterior to the times of Augustus, for it is probable that Pliny followed the chronological order in placing his name between that of Pyrgoteles, the contempo

The age of Apollonius is fixed by his signature on the portrait of Mæcenas.

3 So common a name as Aulus was doubtless borne by different artists and at different dates.

rary of Alexander, and that of Dioscorides, the contemporary of Augustus. The name of Cronius appears at the side of a standing figure of Terpsichore, a design afterwards repeated by Onesas and Allion, whence we may conclude that these two latter came later than Cronius; unless indeed, which is very probable, the intagli of all three are but copies of some famous statue.

Dioscorides is the most famous of all the ancient engravers. There is however a great variety in the style and in the merit of the gems distinguished by his name. Comparing together the impressions of the two Mercuries by him, any experienced eye will detect at once that they certainly are not productions of the same hand. The most admirable of all his works is the Head of Io, which cannot be reproduced exactly in the plaster-cast on account of the under-cutting of the nose, the intaglio being a three-quarter face. It is far superior, both in delicacy and correctness, to the Demosthenes by the same artist in the Piombino Cabinet. This last is upon a splendid Amethyst, but shows somewhat of stiffness and hardness in its manner. Both these intagli are much more deeply cut than is usual with antique gems, and differ in this respect from his "Diomede, master of the Palladium," which is in flat relief. It is however very probable that the difference of style observable in his works may arise from the distant periods of his professional life at which they were respectively executed: thus his Demosthenes may be set down as one of his earliest productions, for certainly there is a perceptible increase in freedom of touch between his portrait of Julius Cæsar and that of Mæcenas, in which the elderly look of the latter would indicate the lapse of many years between the execution of the two, even if we allow, what was most probably the case, that the head of Julius was engraved during the last years of the Dictator, and for