Cameos were a highly developed art form that involved carving details on multilayered gemstones or colored glass so as to leave a white surface in relief against a dark background. Gems and glass were engraved using a drill with changeable heads and a bow wrapped around the drill shaft that was drawn back and forth to make it rotate.

The art of gem cutting reached its peak under Augustus. Gems often bore overtly propagandistic subjects, such as this cameo portraying Augustus with semidivine attributes. A masterpiece in miniature carving, the portrait shows the emperor as a triumphant, deified being wearing a laurel wreath and aegis (symbol of divine attributes, a scaled collar or cloak decorated with a Gorgon's head). He is also armed with a baldric (strap or belt worn across the chest to hold a scabbard) and spear. The aegis, usually associated with Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) and Athena (Minerva), is here decorated with the head of a wind god—perhaps intended as a personification of the summer winds that brought the corn fleet from Egypt and, thus, an oblique reference to Augustus' annexation of Egypt after the defeat of Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 B.C. The precedents for this imagery lie not in the Republican tradition of gem carving but in the art of Hellenistic kingdoms, where rulers—following the example of Alexander the Great—assumed the attributes of various gods and heroes.

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