ABSTRACT
Caligula was assassinated before he could name Agrippina the Younger’s son, Nero, the heir to the Roman Empire. Claudius, who was never expected or prepared to be emperor, began his principate in 41 CE. In 49 CE, Claudius married his niece, Agrippina the Younger, and she, for the second time, used a cameo, the Gemma Claudia to communicate her dynastic importance to the emperor, with the ultimate goal of promoting her son, Nero, as the best candidate for the succession. But the Gemma Claudia is not a very large or complex gemstone; it is less than half the size of either the Gemma Augustea or the Grand Camée de France. The Gemma Claudia represents the final fourth stage of the life cycle of iconography, when symbols begin to wane, become less complex, lose popularity, and eventually die out. By the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, large Imperial cameos disappeared. In the new Flavian dynasty, it was less important to advertise dynastic issues than to legitimize the new dynasty’s right to rule. Some of the pioneering iconography of large Imperial cameos, though, continued to live on in the public sphere in relief sculpture, triumphal arches, and other monuments.
