Ficoroni Cista

Praeneste, today's Palestrina in the hills east of Rome, spent the 4th century BC as a Latin town that fought Rome more than once and ended up bound to it as an ally. A mother there, Dindia Macolnia, still chose a gift for her daughter that had been made in Rome itself. The lid says so in early Latin, in two short lines. Dindia Macolnia gave it to her daughter, Novios Plautios made me in Rome.

The gift is a cylindrical bronze box for a woman's toiletries on three cast feet, with Dionysos and two satyrs on the lid, linked by their arms to form the handle. Around the body runs a finely engraved episode from the voyage of the Argonauts, the heroes who sailed with Jason. The boxer Pollux has just beaten Amykos, a king who made every stranger landing on his shore fight him, and ties him to a tree while Athena watches. Nearby the crew draw water, and the prow of their ship, the Argo, closes the scene. The antiquarian Francesco Ficoroni found the box at Palestrina in 1738, and it still carries his name.