Migration Era

A Lombard Silver Bowl

A plate wrought with a horseman in a shirt of mail riding down a man on foot with a two-handed thrust of a lance. Another infantryman has already fallen atop his large round shield. — Detail from a wrought silver plate in the Castelvecchio, Verona. Said to come from northern Italy and date to the sixth century CE. Photo by Sean Manning.

One of the treasures housed in the Castelvecchio of Verona is an extraordinary silver plate. It dates a bit later than the Sasanid silverwork which I have blogged about before, to the age which gave us Maurice’s Strategikon when East Romans, Goths, and Lombards were struggling for control in Italy and destroying what was left of the wealth and learning built up in the centuries when Rome ruled the world.