# The Lycurgus Cup > Unrecorded Roman cage-cup workshop - 4th century AD > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/roman-cage-cup-workshop/the-lycurgus-cup/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-04 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded Roman cage-cup workshop - **Date:** 4th century AD - **Medium:** Dichroic glass containing colloidal gold and silver, cut and ground as a cage cup; silver-gilt rim band and silver-gilt openwork foot added long after antiquity - **Dimensions:** Height 158.80 mm; maximum diameter 132 mm; weight 700 g - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** Late Roman, 4th century AD - **Current location:** British Museum, London. On display, Room 41, Europe AD 300-1100, Section 5, The Byzantine Empire, Case 11 - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A late Roman drinking cup, 15.9 centimetres high and weighing 700 grams, cut so that a scene of the death of King Lycurgus stands almost free of the vessel wall, joined to it only by hidden bridges. It is the one complete surviving object made of Roman dichroic glass: lit from the front it is a dull jade green, lit from behind it turns translucent wine red. The colour change is caused by particles of a gold and silver alloy about seventy nanometres across, suspended in the glass at a few hundred parts per million.The two states do not look like one object. They look like two, and that is the practical problem this record has to solve before it can show a reader anything: almost every photograph of the Lycurgus Cup in circulation is either the green cup or the red cup, and captions rarely say which. Every plate here says which lighting it shows.Its documented history is short and almost entirely English. It surfaces in 1845 in the hands of a M. Dubois, is exhibited at the Society of Arts in London in 1850, and is with Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild by 1857. It stayed in the Rothschild family for about a century, was described in the literature as the Rothschild Lycurgus Cup, and was bought by the British Museum from Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild in 1958. Where it was for the fourteen hundred years before 1845, and where it was found, are not recorded anywhere. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **4th century AD** Made, place unknown `[unknown]` (origin) No maker, workshop, patron or place of manufacture is recorded. The British Museum dates the cup to the fourth century and gives no findspot. Cologne and Trier are the usual candidates for cage-cup production on the strength of findspot distribution, but that reasoning cannot be applied to an object with no findspot. - **4th century AD-1845** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) Roughly fourteen centuries with no recorded owner, no recorded location and no recorded excavation. The silver-gilt mounts, dated in the literature to the late eighteenth century or about 1800, are the only physical evidence of what happened in the interval, and the suggestion that the cup left a church treasury in the French Revolution is an inference from that remounting rather than a documented event. - **1845** M. Dubois `[disputed]` (first notice) A French writer records seeing the cup in the hands of a M. Dubois in 1845. This is the first appearance of the object in the record. No first name, no price, no source of acquisition and no duration of ownership are given, and the notice is transmitted through a tertiary source. - **by 1857-1879** Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1808-1879), London `[documented]` (collection) The British Museum's acquisition note states that the cup was originally acquired by Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild. Gustav Friedrich Waagen saw it in his collection in 1857. The cup had already been publicly exhibited at the Society of Arts in London in 1850, as number 626 in the catalogue of that exhibition. - **1879-1958** The Rothschild family, by descent, to Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (1910-1990) `[documented]` (descent) That the cup stayed in Rothschild ownership until 1958 is documented by the museum's acquisition note, which names the first and the last owner. The intervening holders are not named in the sources consulted here and are not guessed at. The object was in a Rothschild house and effectively out of scholarly view until 1950, when its rediscovery there prompted Harden and Toynbee's study and the first treatment of cage cups as a class. - **1958-present** British Museum, London `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased from Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild, with a contribution from the National Art Collections Fund, now the Art Fund. Registered 1958,1202.1, the foot separately as 1958,1202.1.a. The price is given in a tertiary source as 20,000 pounds with 2,000 pounds from the NACF; the museum's own record states the seller and the funder but not the figure. This was a negotiated private purchase, not an auction. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The Lycurgus Cup has never been offered at public auction in any source consulted for this record. The only price attached to it is the 1958 purchase from Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild, reported in a tertiary source as 20,000 pounds with 2,000 pounds contributed by the National Art Collections Fund. That is a negotiated private figure and is neither a hammer price nor a premium-inclusive total; the two concepts do not apply to it. No estimate, no reserve and no competing offer is recorded. For a market benchmark on this class of object, the only available comparison is the Constable-Maxwell cage cup, which has its own record in this archive. ## Exhibitions - Works of Ancient and Mediaeval Art, catalogue no. 626, Society of Arts, London, 1850 - Special Exhibition of Works of Art, South Kensington Museum, London, 1862 - Glass of the Caesars, Corning Museum of Glass; British Museum, London; Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne; Museo Capitolino, Rome, 1987-1989 - Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund, Hayward Gallery, London, 2003-2004 - Reflecting Antiquity: Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome, J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Malibu; Corning Museum of Glass, 2007-2008 - Tradition Transformed: Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, 2012-2013 ## Literature - D. B. Harden and J. M. C. Toynbee, 'The Rothschild Lycurgus cup', Archaeologia 97 (1959), 179-212, esp. 207. - D. B. Harden, 'The Rothschild Lycurgus cup: addenda and corrigenda', Journal of Glass Studies 5 (1963), 9-17. - R. G. Chirnside and P. Proffitt, 'The Rothschild Lycurgus cup: an analytical investigation', Journal of Glass Studies 5 (1963), 18-23. - R. Brill, 'The chemistry of the Lycurgus cup', Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Glass, Brussels, 1965, paper 223. - K. Painter, 'The Lycurgus cup', in D. B. Harden et al., Glass of the Caesars, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1987, no. 139. - D. Whitehouse, 'Roman dichroic glass: two contemporary descriptions?', Journal of Glass Studies 31 (1989), 119-21. - D. Barber and I. C. Freestone, 'An investigation of the origin of the colour of the Lycurgus cup by analytical electron microscopy', Archaeometry 32 (1990), 33-45. - G. D. Scott, 'A study of the Lycurgus cup', Journal of Glass Studies 37 (1995), 51-64. - M. Vickers, 'Rock crystal: the key to cut glass and diatreta in Persia and Rome', Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996), 48-65. - C. Steckner, 'Diatrete als Lichtgefasse', in R. Lierke et al., Antike Glastopferei, Mainz, 1999, 110-14. - V. Rondot, 'Le dieu a la bipenne, c'est Lycurgue', Revue d'Egyptologie 52 (2001), 219-49. - I. C. Freestone, N. Meeks, M. Sax and C. Higgitt, 'The Lycurgus cup - a Roman nanotechnology', Gold Bulletin 40 (2007), 270-7. - J. Elsner, 'The Lycurgus cup', in C. Entwistle and L. James (eds), New Light on Old Glass, British Museum Research Publication 179, London, 2013, 103-11. - R. Lierke, 'On the manufacture of diatreta and cage cups from the Pharos beaker to the Lycurgus cup', in the same volume, 89-102. - D. Whitehouse, Cage Cups: Late Roman Luxury Glasses, Corning Museum of Glass, 2015, no. 13. ## Open questions - Where was the cup found? No findspot is recorded anywhere, and there is no ancient context to date it against. - Where was it between the fourth century and 1845? Fourteen centuries are unaccounted for. The remounting of about 1800 suggests a European treasury, but no inventory naming it has been produced. - Who was M. Dubois, what did he pay, and where did he get it? The 1845 notice is a single sentence in a French account. - Which members of the Rothschild family held the cup between 1879 and 1958? The museum's acquisition note names Lionel Nathan de Rothschild and Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild, and nobody in between. - Are the mounts silver-gilt or gilt-bronze, and were they added in the late 1700s or about 1800? Three published descriptions of the same two objects disagree. - Was the 1958 price of 20,000 pounds the whole consideration, and was any part of the transaction a gift, a tax arrangement or a private treaty concession? Only the headline figure and the 2,000 pound Art Fund contribution appear in the sources consulted, and both come from a tertiary source. - Was the blank blown, cast or moulded before cutting? Fremersdorf's cutting orthodoxy and Lierke's mould-pressing hypothesis both remain in print, and the features Fuenfschilling lists have not been answered. - Was it a drinking cup or a hanging lamp? The beaker shape and the drinking toasts on related cups argue for drinking; the dichroism is only visible with the light behind the glass. - Does the scene allude to the fall of Licinius in 324? The reading is argued, not documented, and rests on the rarity of the subject and the century. - How many figural cage cups were made? One survives complete and at least one other is known from a fragment. The denominator is unknown. ## Sources - [1] British Museum, collection record for the Lycurgus Cup, drinking-cup, registration 1958,1202.1, with curator's comments, bibliography, exhibition history, condition, acquisition name and acquisition notes. The URL returns HTTP 403 to automated retrieval; the record was read in full in the in-app browser on 4 August 2026. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Lycurgus Cup'. TERTIARY. Used for the 1845 Dubois notice, Waagen's sighting in 1857, the 1862 South Kensington loan, the 1958 price of 20,000 pounds and the 2,000 pound Art Fund contribution, the 330 and 40 parts per million figures, the 70 nanometre particle size, and the Constantine and Licinius suggestion. Flagged for replacement with Harden and Toynbee 1959 and the museum's acquisition papers. - [3] Bonhams, lot record and catalogue footnotes for lot 18, The Constable-Maxwell Cage-Cup, Antiquities, London New Bond Street, 14 July 2004. Used for Harden and Toynbee's Group A and Group B, Doppelfeld's sub-groups, Fremersdorf 1956, the 1950 rediscovery of the Lycurgus Cup in a Rothschild house, the Hohensulzen grave, the Corning lamp fittings, the corpus figure of over fifty, and the workshop candidates. - [4] Sylvia Fuenfschilling, 'Diatreta (cage cups): the debate continues', review article of David Whitehouse, Cage Cups: Late Roman Luxury Glasses (Corning, 2015), Journal of Roman Archaeology 33 (2020), 931-938. Open access PDF, full text read. Used for the corpus count, the list of features unexplained by cutting, the replica objection, the Latin trade-name argument, the lamp question, the early Netherlands and Belgium cups, and Appendix 8's four probable forgeries. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Cage cup'. TERTIARY. Used for the inscriptions on the Trivulzio, Cologne and Pljevlja cups, the Rhineland concentration of findspots, and the beaker and bowl forms. Flagged for replacement with Whitehouse 2015. - [6] Wikimedia Commons file record for the CC0 photographs of the Lycurgus Cup by User:Vassil, taken in Room 41 of the British Museum, which transcribes the museum's gallery text and dates the gilded silver mounts to the late 1700s. - [7] Metropolitan Museum of Art, cage cup fragment, accession 26.60.95, glass, dichroic, late third to fourth century AD, 5.6 x 7.6 cm, Fletcher Fund 1926, Greek and Roman Art. Record consulted through the Wikimedia Commons file page carrying the museum's own metadata and CC0 release. - [8] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Goluchow cage cup, citing Maria Romanowska-Zadrozna (ed.), Wartime losses. Ancient art. Objects lost in Poland in the years 1939-1945, Polish Ministry of Culture, Art and National Heritage, ISBN 83-88163-44-2. Third century, Cologne, green glass, 18.5 cm, Czartoryski collection at Goluchow, lost 1940. - [9] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Pljevlja cage cup, from Museums of Montenegro, Ministry of Culture, Sport and Media, Podgorica, 2007, photograph by Lazar Pejovic. Fourth century, necropolis Komini II, inscription VIVAS PANELLENI BONA. - [] --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.