Goblet with relief decoration

The Romans, emulating the Hellenistic Greeks, re-garded vessels and implements made of gold and silver as the highest form of tableware. Often acquired in sets, these opulent objects were used for eating and drinking on formal occasions, but they also served to impress visitors to the house with the wealth and re-finement of the homeowners. This cup belongs to the most highly prized category of silver drinking vessels, decorated with figures raised in relief by hammering, a technique known as repoussé. Prevalent in Italy, such items also circulated around the Roman Empire and beyond its borders through trade and gift exchanges; this precious vessel was excavated by archaeologists in the context of a royal grave at Meroë (in modern Sudan), the capital of the Nubian kings. Probably crafted by a silversmith in a workshop in Rome, it may have arrived at faraway Meroë with an expedition sent by the emperor Nero in A.D. 61.The specific interpretation of the scene running around the cup's exterior, which represents some sort of judgment, has challenged scholars. Because the toga-clad figure enthroned on an elevated dais bears a physical resemblance to Augustus, Rome's first em-peror, some have read the scene either as a depiction of a now uncertain historical event or as a political allegory of Rome's dominance over Egypt, personified by the pleading woman with two small children cling-ing to her. A more probable interpretation treats the scene as reflecting a theatrical staging of a well-known myth in which the Corinthian king Kreon orders the sorceress Medea and her offspring into exile; as such, it testifies to the extensive influence of Greek drama on Roman domestic art.