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| Anonymous European Gem-cutter Cameo - Aeneas supplicating Dido undated agate Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Verrius Flaccus reports that when the Roman people were in the grip of a plague and an oracle said it was happening because the gods "were being looked down upon," the city was seized by anxiety because the oracle was opaque; and it came to pass that on the days of the Circus Games a boy was looking down on the procession from a garret, reporting to his father the arrangement of the secret sacred objects he saw in the cart's coffer. When his father told the senate what had happened, it decreed that the route of the procession should be covered with an awning; and when the plague had been put to rest, the boy who had clarified the ambiguous oracle gained the use of the praetexta as his reward."
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| Anonymous Spanish Gem-cutter Cameo - Aurora in Chariot ca. 1550-1600 agate Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian Gem-cutter Intaglio - Three Graces 16th century rock-crystal Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian Gem-cutter Intaglio - Adonis ca. 1700-1730 rock-crystal Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"But since the topic of pleasure has come up, Aristotle teaches us which pleasures we have to guard against. Human beings have five senses, which the Greeks call aistheseis, and these – touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing – are the pathways by which the body and mind seek pleasure. Pleasure derived immoderately from all these senses is base and wicked, but excessive pleasure derived from taste and touch – a compound pleasure, as wise men have judged it – is the most disgusting of all: to those, especially, who surrendered to these pleasures the Greeks applied the terms for the most serious of vices, calling them akrates or akolastoi, or as we say, "incontinent" or "uncontrolled." We understand that the two pleasures of taste and touch – that is, food and sex – are the only ones that human beings share with the beasts, and that's why anyone wholly in the grip of these pleasures is counted among the animals of the fields and the wilds; all other pleasures, which derive from the three remaining senses, are peculiar to human beings."
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| François-Joseph Bosio Cupid with Bow 1808 marble Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Adamo Tadolini Ganymede with Eagle before 1868 marble Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian Sculptor Niobe's Son ca. 1750 terracotta statuette Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse Satyr and Bacchante ca. 1850 terracotta Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"That is my goal for the present work: it comprises many different disciplines, many lessons, examples drawn from many periods, but brought together into a harmonious whole. If you neither disdain the things already familiar to you nor shun those you do not know, you will find many things that are either a pleasure to read or a mark of cultivation to have read or useful to remember. I judge that I have included nothing that is either useless to know or difficult to learn: everything here will make your mind more active, your memory better stocked, your speech more skillful, your language more refined – save here and there where the natural flow of the Latin language might fail me, who was born under an alien sky. And if others chance at some point to have the time and desire to make this work's acquaintance, I hope that they will, as I request, be fair and righteous judges, should my discourse lack the native elegance of the Roman tongue."
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| Berthel Thorvaldsen Cupid and Dionysus 1824 marble relief Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Berthel Thorvaldsen Anacreon and Cupid 1823 marble relief Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian Gem-cutter Cameo - Profile of woman 17th century sardonyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian Gem-cutter Cameo - Sabina 17th century sardonyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| workshop of Antonio Lombardo Spoils of war ca. 1508 marble relief Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Antonio Lombardo Forge of Hephaestus ca. 1508 marble relief Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
Quoted passages from the Saturnalia of Macrobius, written in Latin in about AD 430, the English translation revised by Robert A. Kaster and published by Loeb Classical Library in 2011