"He handed Livia his seal-ring so that she might write letters to the Senate by his authority, recommending the banishment. (This seal, by the way, was the great emerald cut with the helmeted head of Alexander the Great from whose tomb it had been stolen, along with a sword and breast-plate and other personal trappings of the hero. Livia insisted on his using it, in spite of his scruples - he realized how presumptuous it was -- until one night he had a dream in which Alexander, frowning angrily, hacked off with his sword the finger on which he wore it. Then he had a seal of his own, a ruby from India, cut by the famous goldsmith Doscurides, which all his successors have used as the token of their sovereignty.)"
I am attempting to find Graves sources for this incident. Of course since this is a novel Graves may have made up parts of it.
Here is one:
Suetonius:
Life of Augustus 50: The first seal Augustus used for official documents, petitions and letters was a sphinx; next came a head of Alexander the Great; lastly his own head, cut by Dioscurides, the seal which his successors continued to employ. He not only dated every letter, but entered the exact hour of the day or night when it was composed.
18. About this time he had the sarcophagus containing Alexander the Great’s mummy removed from the mausoleum at Alexandria...
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