Adorned with a bead of opalescent glass, this golden bauble belonged to a woman during the twilight of the classical era. It combines a delicate Greco-Roman sensibility with the barbarian fondness for gaudy ornament typical of late antiquity. The woman who wore it so long ago must have been something like the jewels she chose: elegant yet bold. Her name and her history have vanished into time; great empires have come and gone; only this jewel survives as it was. Yet when we hold this lovely talisman in our hands, our connection with that woman and her world is direct.