Fish, in antediluvian period, were intelligent, had fine musical perception and were even affectionate. Thus, in relation to Theseus, the Athenian prince: Minos happened to load Theseus with reproaches, especially on account of his birth; and told him, that, if he were the son of Neptune, he would have no difficulty in going to the bottom of the sea; and then threw a ring in to banter him. The Athenian prince plunged in, and might have been food for fishes, had they not, in the shape of dolphins, taken him upon their backs, as they had done Arion, and conveyed him to the palace of Amphitrite.[6] It is not said whether she, as Neptune’s wife, had a right to the jetsam, flotsam, and lagan, to the sweepings or stray jewelry of the ocean; but she was able to hand Theseus the ring, and also to give him a crown, which he presented to the ill-used lady Ariadne, and it was afterwards placed among the stars.
And, coupled with mythology, we have, according to the ancients, the origin of the ring. Jupiter, from revenge, caused Strength, Force and Vulcan to chain his cousin-german Prometheus to the frosty Caucasus, where a vulture, all the livelong day, banqueted his fill on the black viands of his hot liver. The god had sworn to keep Prometheus there (according to Hesiod[7]) eternally; but other authors give only thirty thousand years as the limit. He who had punished did, for reasons, forgive; but as Jupiter had sworn to keep Prometheus bound for the space of time mentioned, he, in order not to violate his oath, commanded that Prometheus should always wear upon his finger an iron ring, to or in which should be fastened a small fragment of Caucasus, so that it might be true, in a certain sense, that Prometheus still continued bound to that rock. Thus, as we have said, came the idea of the first ring, and, we may add, the insertion of a stone.[8]
While some writers, under this story, connect Prometheus with the first ring, Pliny still says that the inventor of it is not known, and observes that it was used by the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians and Greeks, although, as he thinks, the latter were unacquainted with it at the time of the Trojan war, as Homer does not mention it.[9]
It has however been said that Dschemid, who made known the solar year, introduced the use of the ring.[10]
Touching Pliny’s notion of the antiquity of rings, there is, in Southey’s “Commonplace Book,” (second series,[11]) the following quotation from “Treasurie of Auncient and Moderne Times,” (1619:) “But the good olde man Plinie cannot overreach us with his idle arguments and conjectures, for we read in Genesis that Joseph, who lived above five hundred yeares before the warres of Troy, having expounded the dreame of Pharaoh, king of Ægypt, was, by the sayde prince, made superintendent over his kingdom, and for his safer possession in that estate, he took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand.” ... “In Moses’s time, which was more than foure hundred yeares before Troy warres, wee find rings to be then in use; for we reade that they were comprehended in the ornaments which Aaron the high priest should weare, and they of his posteritie afterward, as also it was avouched by Josephus. Whereby appeareth plainly, that the use of rings was much more ancient than Plinie reporteth them in his conjectures: but as he was a Pagan, and ignorant in sacred writings, so it is no marvell if these things went beyond his knowledge.”
It is pretended that seal-rings were an invention of the Lacedemonians, who, not content with locking their coffers, added a seal; for which purpose they made use of worm-eaten wood, with which they impressed wax or soft wood; and after this they learned to engrave seals.[12]
§ 5. Cylinders, squares and pyramids were forms used for seals prior to the adoption of ring-seals.[13] These settled with the Greeks into the scarabæus or beetle, that is to say, a stone something like the half of a walnut, with its convexity wrought into the form of a beetle, while the flat under surface contained the inscription for the seal. The Greeks retained this derivable form until they thought of dispensing with the body of the beetle, only preserving for the inscription the flat oval which the base presented, and which they ultimately set in rings. This shows how ring-seals came into form. Many of the Egyptian and other ring-seals are on swivel, and we are of opinion that the idea of this convenient form originated with the perforated cylindrical and other seals, which were, with a string passed through them, worn around the neck or from the wrist.[14]
The sculpture of signets was, probably, the first use of gem engraving, and this was derived from the common source of all the arts, India.[15] Signets of lapis lazuli and emerald have been found with Sanscrit inscriptions, presumed to be of an antiquity beyond all record. The natural transmission of the arts was from India to Egypt, and our collections abound with intaglio and cameo hieroglyphics, figures of Isis, Osiris, the lotus, the crocodile, and the whole symbolic Egyptian mythology wrought upon jaspers, emeralds, basalts, bloodstones, turquoises; etc. Mechanical skill attained a great excellence at an early period. The stones of the Jewish high-priests’ breast-plate were engraved with the names of the twelve tribes, and of those stones one was a diamond(?). The Greek gems generally exhibit the figure nude; the Romans, draped. The Greeks were chiefly intaglios.
It is generally understood that the ancients greatly excelled the moderns in gem engraving, and that the art has never been carried to the highest perfection in modern times. Mr. Henry Weigall, however, states that “this supposition is erroneous, and has probably arisen from the fact of travellers supposing that the collections of gems and impressions that they have made in Italy are exclusively the works of Italian artists; such, however, is not the case, and I have myself had the satisfaction of pointing out to many such collectors, that the most admired specimens in their collections were the works of English artists.”[16]