The cameo shows a dancing woman, presumably a bacchante. These women formed part of the retinue of the god of wine, Bacchus and participated in the god’s wild cultic feasts known as Bacchanalia. Cameos can be difficult to date exactly, and dating is often based on stylistic criteria. In this case, the delicate draping of the costume, which has many parallels in sculpture from the same period, suggests that the cameo derives from the 1st century BC.
