So I came across a post on reddit showing a sapphire ring allegedly worn by Caligula himself that depicts his wife Caesonia! Right away it looked more like Faustina senior to me, wife of Antoninus Pius. So I looked further and every articles/posts on this ring says it belongs to the Julio Claudian era. Even the owner of the ring describes it as such. I can definitely see Pius ordering artisans to make jewels like these in honour of his wife after her consecration. Who knows, the priest of the temple that he built for her might have even worn this ring!! While a ring like this would've certainly decorated the fingers of royal family/Patricians, I seriously doubt this would've been personally worn by Caligula, or that it even portrays his wife. An article on the ring! https://mymodernmet.com/caligula-sapphire-ring-marlborough-gem/ An example of Faustina the Elder denarius from Vcoins. What's your opinion?
There is at least one blogger who agrees with you: https://historum.com/threads/the-wrongly-supposed-sapphire-hololith-ring-of-emperor-gaius.180951/
I wonder how they think they know it is actually ancient? The style brings up lots of questions (see the comments on historum) as to which century it belongs to. It it extremely unusual. The features might be unusual for an antiquity because it is not really ancient (of course, at the time of or before Marlborough in the 18th century). A forger who knew the Duke liked gems could have made this special object for the Duke. What techniques do we have to date gems?
I believe it is truly from the Roman era, we modern people often underestimate the knowledge and the technologies of the ancient world. However why I think it indeed belongs to the Romans because no one (or very few) knew about Roman emperors, much less those empresses around 200-300 years ago, so who would go out of their way to make a top quality ring portraying someone like Faustina, but it totally makes sense if Antoninus Pius or someone close to them ordered this ring to be made. Or if we really want to go with scientific route, we can analyse the composition of the gold, and compare it with an aureus from the era of Antoninus Pius!
