32 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
Nicomachorum
and on the other Symmachorum 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 treasures 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 Musée
de Cluny, Paris. On investigation it turned out that the companion
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
