t. There were plates,
cups and saucers; a tureen weighing four pounds, wrought in enamelled
repousse, with birds, lizards, branches of ivy, berries, and other
fruits and animals, and signed by the maker; a statue of a centaur;
and a wine jug, which, after passing through many hands, became the
property of the queen of Naples, Caroline Murat, at a cost of five
thousand ducats.

Alessandro Visconti reported the treasure-trove at once to count
Tournon, the French prefect; but he took no official notice of it, and
the silver was melted in the mint of Rome, and by the silversmiths of
Viterbo and Perugia. Visconti estimates the weight of the silver at
_thirty thousand ounces_.[103]

In 1821, under the foundations of a house at Parma, precious objects
were found to the value of several thousand scudi. The few bought for
the Museo Parmense by its director, Pietro de Lama, comprise eight
bracelets, four rings, a necklace, a chain to which is attached a
medallion of Gallienus, a brooch, and thirty-four medals; all of pure
gold, and weighing three pounds and four ounces.

On May 9, 1877, two earthen jars were discovered at Belinzago, near
Milan, in a farm belonging to a man named Erba. They contained
twenty-seven thousand bronze coins, with a total weight of three
hundred and sixty pounds. Except a few pieces belonging to Romulus,
Maximian, Chlorus, Galerius, Galeria Valeria, and Licinius, the great
mass bear the effigy and name of Maxentius, with an astonishing
variety of letters and symbols on the reverse.

My personal experience in the discovery of treasure, in the special
significance of the word, is limited to the fragments of a bedstead
(?) of gilt brass, studded with gems. This discovery took place in
1879, near the southwest corner of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, on
the Esquiline, in a room belonging to the Horti Lamiani, the favorite
residence of Caligula and of Alexander Severus. The frame of the couch
rested on four supports, most gracefully cut in rock-crystal; the
frame itself was ornamented with bulls' heads and inlaid with cameos
and gems, to the number of four hundred and thirty. There was also a
"glass paste" representing the heads of Septimius Severus and his
empress Julia Domna. It seems that parts of this rich piece of
furniture must have been inlaid with agate incrustations, of which one
hundred and sixty-eight pieces were discovered in the same room.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] See Otto Hirschfeld: _Die kaiser