Harnessing the Soul: Butterflies, Grasshoppers & the Art of the Roman Intaglio

by Mary Harrsch © 2026 

I saw this whimsical Roman carnelian sea dated between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE and did a little more research on the symbolism it represented. I was aware of butterflies often representing human souls but I wasn't sure about a grasshopper driving the team.

Carved from reddish-brown carnelian — a stone whose crystalline structure doesn't stick to wax — intaglios like this one from the 1st century BCE - 1st century CE were pressed into softened wax to seal letters and documents. Image courtesy of (Bertolami Fine Art)

This extraordinary carnelian intaglio — small enough to fit in the palm of your hand — is one of the most charming survivals of Roman gem-carving, depicting a grasshopper driving a chariot pulled by butterflies. It repays close looking.

The stone itself is significant. Carnelian was among the most prized materials for Roman intaglios, associated with vitality, good fortune, and protection. Pliny the Elder singled it out for its practical virtue as a seal stone: wax simply does not adhere to it.

The grasshopper (*gryllus* / *locusta*) was a richly layered symbol in the Greco-Roman world. Athenians wore golden grasshopper pins as markers of autochthony — indigenous aristocratic identity — a resonance Roman owners would have recognized. The insect was also linked to Apollo and the Muses through its song, embodying poetic inspiration and the aristocratic ideal of *otium* (cultivated leisure).

The butterflies are doing something philosophically serious. The Greek word Ψυχή (*Psyche*) meant simultaneously "soul," "breath of life," and "butterfly" — these were not distinct concepts. Butterflies appear regularly in Roman funerary art at the moment of the soul's departure from the body. To harness them as draft animals, guided by the grasshopper-charioteer, is to picture *reason directing the soul* — a strikingly visual rendering of Plato's chariot allegory in the *Phaedrus*, in which the charioteer represents intellect governing the competing forces of the psyche. For a Roman owner educated in Greek philosophy, this reading would have been immediately available.

The piece belongs to the well-documented genre of *grylloi* — fantastical, often humorous intaglio scenes in which insects, animals, and hybrid creatures act out human roles. These were wildly popular in this period and operated on multiple registers at once: as displays of wit and *urbanitas*, as apotropaic objects (the grotesque was believed to deflect the evil eye), and as vehicles for genuine philosophical reflection.

What makes this gem so compelling is precisely that layered ambiguity. It is funny, beautiful, philosophically serious, and magically protective — all carved into a stone no larger than a thumbnail. Roman glyptic art at its finest.

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