Cameo Gem Inset Into a Hollow Ring

A chariot rushes past the walls of a city on this Roman intaglio gem set in a gold ring. With these few components of a narrative, a Roman viewer would have understood the scene as the episode from the *Iliad*, in which the Greek hero Achilles drags the corpse of his Trojan opponent Hector behind his chariot around the walls of the city of Troy. The gem carver, however, left out a crucial element of the story--Hector's dead body. Frequently depicted in Greek art, this episode from the mythological Trojan War remained popular in certain forms of Roman art, especially gem carving. 

This gem appears to be fashioned as a cameo from nicolo, a semi-precious stone with light and dark blue layers, but it is actually made from glass. Glass gems were a popular alternative to expensive semi-precious stones in Roman jewelry. They often imitated banded stones like agate and nicolo.