ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the function and meanings of late antique silver in its domestic context, and more specifically on the way that it continued to represent the traditional iconographic repertoire of Graeco-Roman mythology. It examines the use of such iconography in the fourth and early fifth centuries AD, through a close study of the large display plates which are a typical component of the major domestic hoards of this period, such as the Kaiseraugst, Sevso, and Mildenhall Treasures, and which also survive as lone pieces, such as the Corbridge Lanx and the Parabiago plate. The chapter traces their sucessors into the sixth and early seventh centuries and examines an exceptional set of display plates, the so-called David Plates from Cyprus, which replaces the heroes of classical mythology with a biblical one. Mythological imagery on silver has also frequently been the subject of such over-simplistic assumptions about the relationship between artistic representation and cult practice.
