32 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



Nicomachorum and on the other Syminachorum is generally- 

 conceded to be the finest work of its kind that has come down 

 to us from ancient times. In the lapse of centuries it has 

 passed through some strange vicissitudes. A plausible 

 conjecture sees in it a work executed toward the end of the 

 fourth century A. D., to celebrate an alliance or compact, 

 social or religious, between two patrician families, the 

 Nicomachi and the Symmachi. This latter family was of 

 consular rank, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, an author of 

 repute, having been chosen consul in 391 A. D.; his father, 

 L. Aurelius Symmachus, held the rank of praetor about the 

 middle of the fourth century. The design certainly seems 

 to indicate a connection with some religious ceremonial, as 

 on each leaf is figured a Bacchante standing before an altar 

 and about to offer a sacrifice of incense. In view of this we 

 must feel it as an irony of fate that less than three centuries 

 after its production the leaves of the diptych were made 

 to serve as doors to a shrine within which were gathered 

 some of the most precious Christian relics. This shrine was 

 brought from Rome by St. Berchaire about 679 A. D. to 

 the newly founded abbey church of Montier-en-Der, in the 

 diocese of Troyes, France, and the shrine with its ivory doors 

 is described in detail in the inventory of the monastic treas- 

 ures made in 1717. How long after this time it remained 

 intact appears uncertain; it is said to have been destroyed 

 by fire, although the saintly relics were preserved. Nothing 

 further is known of the ivory doors, the leaves of the Roman 

 diptych, until 1860, when one of them was fished up out of the 

 depths of a well at Montier-en-Der. This leaf, inscribed 

 Nicomachorum, has since been acquired by the Musee de 

 Cluny, Paris. On investigation it turned out that the com- 

 panion leaf, bearing the inscription Symmachorum, was in 

 the possession of a collector of the city of Montier-en-Der, 

 and from him indirectly it reached the Victoria and Albert 



