Mildenhall Great Dish
A Roman silver dish with the revels of Bacchus in relief, found by a farmer ploughing in England.
The dish belongs to the Mildenhall Treasure, ploughed up in Suffolk in 1942. It weighs over eight kilograms and is one of the finest pieces of Roman silver to survive. It is in the British Museum.
Materials: Solid silver
Manufacture: Raised and chased silver; the figures worked from the back and finely engraved on the front.
A sea god’s head in the centre and Bacchus’s followers in a ring round it.
The flat, broad form – a dish for display, not for eating from.