The lion has always been a symbol of masculine power. The Persians considered the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo leo) a symbol of royal sovereignty; for the Egyptians and Assyrians, displaying dominance over the lion through hunts was an essential ritual of kingship. In the Classical world, the lion was inextricably linked to the myth of Herakles and the Nemean Lion, the first of his famous Labours. The story begins with Herakles’ birth, under inauspicious circumstances. Born from an affair between the chief-god Zeus and a mortal woman, Alkmeone, Herakles’ very existence irked Zeus’ wife Hera. As Herakles grew, Hera took a jealous interest in his development. When he married Megara, a daughter of King Kleon of Thebes, and their happy union produced children, Hera was angered. She inspired madness in Herakles, who, in a fit of rage, murdered his entire household. Distraught, Herakles sought penance from the Oracle at Delphi, which instructed Herakles to place himself in the service of his cousin King Eurystheos. Eurystheos set him twelve impossible tasks, the famous Labours, to purify his soul. The first such task was to kill the Nemean Lion. This extraordinary creature’s golden hide was impervious to bladed weapons, and nobody had yet succeeded in overcoming it. Herakles searched the region of Kleonai for the lion, eventually coming across a boy, who informed him that, if he defeated the beast, the townspeople would sacrifice a lion to Zeus. If he failed, it was the boy himself who would be sacrificed. With this added pressure, Herakles encountered the lion. Not understanding that its fur was impenetrable, he shot at it with arrows. After repeated failures, Herakles cornered the lion in its cave and, in the darkness, stunned it with his club, before choking the life from it. He used the lion’s claw to skin it, and wore the skin as his armour for the rest of his life.

Herakles, known in Latin as Hercules, was the most popular demigod or minor deity in the Roman Empire, and his labours were repeatedly referenced in Roman art. Emperors loved to be portrayed in the guise of the hero, draped in a lion’s skin. Through doing so, they could claim descent from Zeus, Jupiter in the Roman pantheon, and thus assert divine right for their rule. As powerful beasts, lions were also a source of gory martial entertainment. The use of lions in gladiatorial combat is well-noted, as was the practice of damnatio ad bestias, condemning convicted men to execution by wild animal. In the Roman army, the lion – as symbolic of bravery and military valour – was a popular symbol, and the lion was the mascot of at least one legion, Legio XIII Gemina. Representative of Roman conquests in the east, from which the ready supply of lions for the Colosseum and for Rome’s imperial menageries originated, lions were frequently represented on coins to depict Rome’s mastery over Mesopotamia and the Near East in particular. Now extinct in the region, the Barbary lion was once populous in Iraq, Iran and Egypt.

Lions were a popular motif for entranceways, providing apotropaic protection to the household within. The same guardian lion masks that featured on entranceways, and are fossilised alongside elite doorways in the city of Herculaneum, which was engulfed by the pyroclastic flows of Mount Vesuvius’ eruption. But what existed at the large scale also existed at a smaller scale. While lions were useful protectors of homes, they were equally valuable guardians of money chests and jewellery boxes. The size and quality of this remarkable appliqué implies that a money chest is more likely. Beautifully cast, this lion mask holds in its mouth a ring, which would act as the handle for chest. The lion is exquisitely cast, with a remarkable lifelike attention to detail. One must imagine that the artist had worked from life, depicting the relaxed, contemplative features of the lion at rest. The immense quality of the lion is most clearly expressed through the musculature of the face, and through the elegant arrangement of the tufts of the mane. As an accoutrement for a money-chest, it is most likely that we can associate this appliqué with the military administration, which transported considerable sums for the payment of legionaries and service contracts between the various forts along the major Roman roads using elaborately decorated chests designed to emphasise the power of the political-military machine. The coins from such chests would be decanted into the legionary’s own, less decorative, money containers, and eventually into the leather purses or money-pouches which each soldier carried around with him. Contrary to popular belief, Roman soldiers were probably not paid in salt (despite salt, sal, being the etymological root of salarium, salary). Salt was most likely given as a boon to the salary, in the personal gift of the Emperor. Instead, soldiers of the Roman army were relatively well-paid, at 225 denarii per year in the time of Augustus – four-and-a-half times the subsistence salary of 50 denarii calculated by archaeologists – though it should be noted that Roman soldiers paid for their own arms and armour. Additional one-off payments were often authorised by Emperors to boost their own popularity.