The short tunic worn by Stilicho is embroidered all over with pictures of his wife and son, his long chlamys having only portraits of the boy. It was a popular custom at this period to have the portraits of near relations embroidered on State garments, especially pictures of children. The poet Claudian in his panegyric on Stilicho, alludes to scenes from the lives of Eucherius and his little sisters being embroidered on the robe of their father. More often the portrait was on a square of stuff, or segment, which was let into the front of the garment (see Fig. 5). The first diptych of certain date is that of Probus, Consul at Rome, 406, No. 2 (Fig. 3), and probably intended as a gift for the Emperor Honorius, who is depicted thereon as a figure of heavy proportions, borrowed from the common type of imperial statue. The head is evidently a portrait, as even at the most decadent period there was always a striving, even if an unsuccessful one, after portraiture and naturalism. It is interesting to note the nimbus round the head of Honorius. In heathen times the nimbus was given to the immortals[3] and to images of the deified emperors. Christian art adopted it, but not invariably, and it appears to have been regarded more as an attribute of power than saintliness. Though Christ and his disciples and the Old Testament[4] heroes received it, it also encircled the heads of the great people of this world. We find it on the celebrated Justinian mosaics at S. Vitale in Ravenna, and on the medals of Justinian, and as late as the eleventh century on the plaque of the Emperor and Empress, Romanus and Eudoxia, in the Bibliothèque nationale at Paris (Fig. 20). Next in date and infinitely coarser in execution is that of Felix, 428 (No. 3); the head is of a rugged type, and the Consul is represented standing alone at the door of his house. Asturias, 449 (No. 4), on the contrary, is throned high in front of a colonnade and accompanied by two attendants. In the tablet, however, of the Consul Boethius, 487 (No. 5), we see for the first time the Consul seated, _mappa_ in hand, signalling the commencement of the games; but the design on the two leaves still has some variation, and on the second leaf he stands without the _mappa_. The diptych of Sividius, 488 (No. 6), furnishes the earliest example of the tablets of simpler type, which were probably given to people of lower degree. It is decorated by an inscribed medallion surrounded by foliated scrolls and four rosettes. All these are from the Western Empire. [Illustration: [VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON 4. FIRST LEAF OF THE DIPTYCH OF ORESTES, 530 A.D.] With the commencement of the sixth century and the diptych of Areobindus, Consul at Constantinople, 506, we change to the Eastern Empire and find the formal type already fixed (see Fig. 4).