A few remarks may be of use to the student with reference to some of these important diptychs. The leaves of no. 3 now form the covers of a manuscript life of St. Ludgerus. This diptych is erroneously named by Labarte as the most ancient known to exist. Of no. 5, the other leaf was lost or stolen during the French revolution of 1792. Mr. Oldfield, a very high authority, suggests that no. 6 should be given to Valentinian II., in which case the date would be about A.D. 380. The earlier date is supported by the great beauty and admirable execution of the diptych. No. 7 has no inscription: it bears a monogram which contains all the letters of the name Areobindus. It is engraved in the Thesaurus of Gori. No. 8 was formerly in the church of St. Martin at Liége, and it was long supposed to be lost. Professor Westwood, however, has found the greater portion of one leaf, used as the cover of a book of the gospels in the royal library at Darmstadt. This, probably, is not a fragment of the Liége diptych, but of another of the same consul. The two leaves are engraved in Gori. A folio volume of more than 200 pages was edited by Hagenbuch in 1738, containing a number of learned essays on the diptych of Manlius Boethius, no. 10. It has at the beginning engravings of both leaves: and the consul is represented on one in a standing position; on the other, sitting and holding the _mappa_ in his right hand. The inscription is unusually obscure: how much so may be judged from the fact that the editor of the book has collected more than half a dozen different interpretations of it. Some of them are amusing. The inscription on one leaf runs thus: NARMANLBOETHIVSVCETINL, on the other, EXPPPVSECCONSORDETPATRIC. The members of the Academy at Paris, to whom the difficulty had been referred, proposed to read “Natales regios Manlius Boethius vir clarissimus et inlustris ex propria pecunia voto suscepto edixit celebrandos consul ordinarius et patricius.” But a more probable reading is, “Narius Manlius Boethius vir clarissimus et inlustris, expræfectus prætorio, præfectus, et comes, consul ordinarius et patricius.” Again, against this last some have disputed that the PPP meant three times prefect, and CC twice consul. We must remember that artists in ivory were driven, because of the narrow limits at their disposal, to use extreme forms of contractions and symbols, scarcely intelligible even in their own time, instead of words: far more so, indeed, than were the carvers of inscriptions upon monumental stones, altars, and sarcophagi. Professor Westwood leaves the date of no. 11 doubtful: it is remarkable, as representing in a medallion, between the busts of the emperor and empress, the head of Christ with a cruciferous nimbus.