Though the Romans were an art-loving people, they openly connived at art-fraud, but for esthetic reasons, as we learn from Pliny. He tells us that in his time the coins of Rome were so clumsily modeled and so basely cast that several artists made new molds, treating the designs of the mint more carefully, and produced spurious coins which were eagerly sought in place of the inartistic legal tender. Michelangelo, piqued at the extravagant attention paid the antiques (to the exclusion of interest in his early struggles for recognition), conceived the clever idea of doing an Eros in marble after his own design, burying the work in mud for some months, and then digging it up in the presence of certain noble collectors. These gentlemen went mad over its beauty, proclaiming it to be the greatest relic antiquity had left them. Michelangelo finally disclosed to them his own initials, which he had carved in a hidden fold of the wings, and was highly amused at the discomfiture of his companions. They, however, came to their senses and had the good grace to recognize the towering genius who stood laughing before them. Indeed, one of them became his foremost patron. This was a harmless trick conceived for salutary purposes, and not at all to be classed with the exploits of Gambello, Bassiano, or Giovanni del Cavino, whose forgeries of Roman medals were particularly skilful, though not proof against modern scientific methods of uncovering frauds. No wonder one of the ancient writers declared that, “the very nerves and sinews of knowledge consist of believing nothing rashly.” This was especially true in the days of the Renaissance, when a study of the antique came so quickly into fashion, and in the train of it such efforts to collect ancient objects of art that some of the unscrupulous but skilful artists and artisans of the time could scarcely resist the temptations offered by the ease with which clever art-forgeries were palmed off upon the gullible, who paid enormous prices for them. We know how Andreini of old-time Florence forged Greek signatures to ancient unsigned intaglii and how Flavio Sirletti lent his skill to it with the aid of Pliny’s record of ancient sculptors. The collection of Prince Poniatowski, nephew of the last King of Poland, contained some three thousand fraudulent engraved gems! As all of these gems were very beautiful in themselves, and as nearly all of their subjects were original with their engravers, it is unfortunate that such excellent and exquisitely done work could not have stood forth on its own merits to cast fame and not shame on the cunning hands that produced them.