– the Victory, the lance, and to a lesser extent the heads of the emperor and of his horse are all sculpted very nearly in the round. The care taken in modelling the drapery and in the rendering of certain anatomical details, such as the muscles of the emperor's arm, may qualify it as classicising. These characteristics, added to the disproportionate scale of the figures, underline the majesty of the imperial person, recalling Theodosian art. Side panels The side panels are in less-elevated relief (the maximum depth of the carving on the central panel is 28 mm, whereas it is only 9 mm on the side panels), and are stylistically slightly less virtuosic than the central panel. They bear borders inscribed in a simplified zig-zag pattern, leaving room in the border around the central panel for a garland of stylised leaves with a small round hole on the middle of each side for four now-lost inlays. The left hand panel represents a superior officer, recognisably by his military clothing and equipment, comparable to those of the emperor. Bearded, he wears a cuirass and the paludamentum, fixed to his right shoulder by a simpler fibula than that worn by the emperor. We can distinguish the scabbard of his sword fixed to his belt, worn on the left side. He advances towards the emperor and presents him with a statuette of Victory on a pedestal - she hold a crown and a palm, like the Victory on the central panel. At his feet is a bag. The man stands in an architectural scheme formed of two columns supporting Corinthian capitals and of a tessellated pattern (possibly opus sectile) evoking a room in an imperial palace. This figure is sometimes interpreted as a consul, and the statuette of Victory and the bag (interpreted as in all probability containing gold) as consular attributes. However, the figure may also represent sparsio, the consular largesses represented on other diptychs, such as those of Clement (513) and Justin (540), with the bag of gold more broadly symbolic of war booty, proof of imperial triumph. Equally, where Caesar Gallus holds a comparable statuette of victory in his image on the Calendar of 354, he wears civil and not military clothing. The officer on the Barberini ivory is thus more likely to represent a general who took part in the victorious campaign represented by the ivory. It is natural