The subjects are a proof of the still lingering power of classical antiquity, and of the infiltration of oriental designs. They are either taken from ancient myths (often very imperfectly understood by the adaptor), or from scenes in the hippodrome or circus (_Volterra_); perhaps also from the statues, part of the Grecian loot that Constantine had brought from Rome to decorate his new city. [Illustration: [VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON 15. THE VEROLI CASKET Byzantine, ninth and tenth centuries] Most of these caskets are composed in the gayest frame of mind; on the beautiful ivory _Veroli_ casket the little loves, on the light fantastic toe, dance to the harping of poor, melancholy, old Polyphemus, who is compelled to cease his solitary lament and play hornpipes and jigs for the benefit of wild Bacchantes, who whirl round and round till their drapery is tossed out like foam. It is amusing to see these same ladies on the casket at Cividale, no longer carved with delicate finish, but angular and rough, the drapery flying out like wire, and the development of the muscles rivalling that of a prima ballerina. The maker of the _Pirano_ casket in the Vienna Museum imitated the _Veroli_ in many things, as the putti and the panther, and the group of Mars caressing Venus under the chin, in the good old-fashioned Brescia diptych way, also the peculiar treatment of the hair in tiny knobby ringlets, which is found again on the Bologna casket, and on two most interesting plaques in the British Museum. One plaque represents _Christ freeing the Souls in Hades_, and the other _The Nativity_. On the first there is a group of little child-souls with polished round muscles and knobby hair, also the hair of the angels in both the scenes is of the same character, the rest of the technique has little to distinguish it from the so-called X-XI century type; but the conception of the subject is not the ordinary stereotyped one of later years, and those few peculiarities of style have such a marked connection with the _Veroli_ casket, that Graeven considers it likely that they both came from the same _atelier_, and may, perhaps, be dated about the middle of the ninth century. Before pointing out the various similarities between these secular caskets, and those with religious subjects, it would be well to inquire into the ancestry of the separate styles.