A beautiful fragment of Hellenistic / Roman Republican sculpture in bronze portraying a hand firmly holding a short dagger with triangular blade. The sculpture was realized with the lost wax technique, a method of metal casting in which a molten metal is poured into a mold that has been created by means of a wax model covered in clay. Once the mold is made, the wax model is melted and drained away. Inside the hand there are still visible remains of the original mold realized with a clay rich in iron.