£80 - £120
Roman carnelian intaglio set in a silver bezel from a finger ring.
The figure can be confidently identified as Bonus Eventus, the Roman personification of 'good outcome'. Bonus Eventus is the most popular motif found of intaglios from Roman Britain, with over 120 recovered to date (Marshman 2015, 108). This composition is a particularly simple and common one, with more complex images including a skin or cloak swept over the shoulders or a pair of wheat ears, cakes or loaf of bread, and sometimes a lagobolon (hunting stick) that may feature game slung from it.
The style of the engraving is executed in what has been termed the 'incoherent grooves style' (Maaskant-Kleibrink 1975, 227-234), so called because of its somewhat slapdash execution. Here this is typified by using a single groove to form the shoulder and left arm with the ear of wheat simply protruding from it and no attempt to indicate the hand that should hold it. Comparable compositions with this feature are also found on a red jasper intaglio from Willoughby on the Wolds, Nottinghamshire (Henig 2007, No. 214), and a carnelian in a silver ring from Haxby, Yorkshire (YORYM-EAC9B4), and there are a number of comparable carnelians, some of which were also set in silver rings, from the Snettisham Jewellers Hoard unearthed just across the Wash in Norfolk (Johns 1997, eg. No. 113, 123 & 228, all identified as the work of 'Engraver B'). Another feature shared with the gems from Snettisham is the way in which the motif extends right to the gem's edges using all of the available space. The incoherent grooves style is datable to the later second and third centuries AD, with the Snettisham Hoard dated by the coins it contains to after AD 155.
The silver box-bezel is almost certainly from a finger ring, and there are traces on its sides that could indicate where a hoop was formerly soldered to it, most evident when viewed from the underside. Such box-bezels typically come from Henig Type IV rings, which feature a relatively thin round-section hoop and a characteristic pair of metal globules fixed flanking each shoulder. Examples of this form are only known in precious metal rings from Britain, including two gold rings with nicolo gems from the Backworth Hoard (Hawkins 1851, 37), and a silver ring with a carnelian intaglio from the Antonine Wall fort at Camelon, Perthshire (Maxfield 1975, 52), both of which date to the mid second century AD, although it should be noted that these rings include gems engraved in earlier and better executed styles and Henig believes this is a later Roman form (2007, 12). For this example a date between the mid-second and third century is therefore most probable.
Recorded on the PAS database as LIN-443672
https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/901280
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