The Roman Elephant Plate
The club copy of the "Roman elephant plate" depicts an elephant with mahout and calf, and was found at Capena, Le Macchie necropolis, tomb 233, and now in the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia.
A rare example of black-glazed vases with painted decoration, called pocola from the inscription containing the genitive name of a divinity followed by the word pocolom, produced in the Lazio region in the first half of the third century BC. They were for votive and cult use with holes for hanging the pottery on walls. The unstable pigment colours used to decorate the plate were white, brown-yellow and red, fairly dense and vivid, applied in spots onto the black paint.
This plate may have belonged to a series created to celebrate the triumph in 275 BC of the famous Roman general Curius Dentatus over King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had first brought elephants to Italy for use in warfare against the Romans.
A rare example of black-glazed vases with painted decoration, called pocola from the inscription containing the genitive name of a divinity followed by the word pocolom, produced in the Lazio region in the first half of the third century BC. They were for votive and cult use with holes for hanging the pottery on walls. The unstable pigment colours used to decorate the plate were white, brown-yellow and red, fairly dense and vivid, applied in spots onto the black paint.
This plate may have belonged to a series created to celebrate the triumph in 275 BC of the famous Roman general Curius Dentatus over King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had first brought elephants to Italy for use in warfare against the Romans.
