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Lot Essay
The gold setting is formed of a broad band, flat on the interior, with a central rib on the exterior between concave channels. Both the hoop and the conical terminals are edged with beaded wire. Where the hoop joins the terminals there are some clusters of granulation. The beetle is threaded onto a gold pin that passes through the terminals and is knobbed at each end. For the form compare the example in London, no. 313 in F.H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Ringer Rings, Greek, Etruscan & Roman, in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum.
The large splendid beetle is carefully detailed, with vertical hatching on the edges of the plinth. On the underside, a youthful Herakles (Hercle to the Etruscans) decapitates a crested serpent. The muscular hero is nude, leaning forward, pressing down on the serpent's coils with his left foot, grasping its neck in his right hand, and cutting with the weapon in his left hand. His club sits behind him, and the scene is enclosed within a hatched border.
Herakles' most famous encounter with a serpent comes from the second of his Twelve Labors, where he kills the multi-headed Lernean Hydra. Although some scholars have interpreted his fighting a single-headed snake (see for example the later carnelian scarab in the British Museum, no. 81 in P. Zazoff, Etruskische Skarabäen) as a depiction of the second Labor, Boardman and Wagner (op. cit., pp. 98 and 109) inform that this need not be the case. The hero encounters snakes in other contexts, including one guarding the tree of the Hesperides, another during his travels in Lydia, and the shape-shifter Periklymenos, killed by Herakles, could take the form of a snake. In Greek art, encounters with a single-headed snake are rare (see Boardman, et al., "Herakles," in LIMC, vol. V, nos. 2820-2833, for depictions on vases, bronzes, gems and coins), and the motif appears on Etruscan and Italic gems of the 3rd century B.C. The example presented here is the earliest and the finest of the series.
The large splendid beetle is carefully detailed, with vertical hatching on the edges of the plinth. On the underside, a youthful Herakles (Hercle to the Etruscans) decapitates a crested serpent. The muscular hero is nude, leaning forward, pressing down on the serpent's coils with his left foot, grasping its neck in his right hand, and cutting with the weapon in his left hand. His club sits behind him, and the scene is enclosed within a hatched border.
Herakles' most famous encounter with a serpent comes from the second of his Twelve Labors, where he kills the multi-headed Lernean Hydra. Although some scholars have interpreted his fighting a single-headed snake (see for example the later carnelian scarab in the British Museum, no. 81 in P. Zazoff, Etruskische Skarabäen) as a depiction of the second Labor, Boardman and Wagner (op. cit., pp. 98 and 109) inform that this need not be the case. The hero encounters snakes in other contexts, including one guarding the tree of the Hesperides, another during his travels in Lydia, and the shape-shifter Periklymenos, killed by Herakles, could take the form of a snake. In Greek art, encounters with a single-headed snake are rare (see Boardman, et al., "Herakles," in LIMC, vol. V, nos. 2820-2833, for depictions on vases, bronzes, gems and coins), and the motif appears on Etruscan and Italic gems of the 3rd century B.C. The example presented here is the earliest and the finest of the series.