2nd-3rd century AD. A bronze cult figurine representing an eagle with closed wings, resting upon a young reclining deer, a snake wrapped around the body, legs bent and head turned, rectangular base with fixing hole to the reverse, probably a staff finial. See Macchioro, V., Il simbolismo nelle figurazioni sepolcrali romane, Studi di Ermeneutica, Napoli, 1909, for discussion: see also Walters, H. B., British Museum, London, Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum (Band 4): Vases of the latest period Walters, London, 1896; Furtwängler, A., Die antiken Gemmen: Geschichte der Steinschneidekunst im Klassischen Altertum Banden 1-3, Leipzig und Berlin, 1900. 68 grams, 54mm (2"). Property of a Dutch gentleman; formerly in an old collection formed in the 1970s. Representations of an eagle fighting a snake are very common in Roman art, where the eagle was used as a symbol of strength and victory. Later Roman art used it in the figurations of apotheosis, or with the images linked with the foundations of Constantinople. A vase from the British Museum (inv. B.194, Walters, II, p.129, pl.4) shows the fight of Hercules and Geryon, where the defeated Geryon has an eagle with the snake as an episema of his shield, as well as a gem (Furtwängler, 1900, vol. 1, LXI, 17) on which is depicted a lion ready to jump, an eagle with a snake to the front; a stele from Bithynia shows two figures of a young man fighting against the barbarians on a ship, above him an eagle with a snake, which in proto-Attic vessels is often symbolic of fallen warriors in battle.