Roman ring of ‘Victory.’
With regard to the engraved representations on rings, Clemens Alexandrinus gives some advice to the Christians of the second century: ‘Let the engraving upon the stone be either a pigeon, or a fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a musical lyre, which was the device used by Polycrates; or a ship’s anchor, which Seleucus had cut upon his signet; and if it represents a man fishing, the wearer will be put in mind of the Apostle, and of the little children drawn up out of the water. For we must not engrave on them images of idols, which we are forbidden even to look at; nor a sword, nor a bow, being the followers of peace, nor drinking goblets, being sober men.’ (See Chapter IV., ‘Rings in connexion with ecclesiastical usages,’ religious rings.) The Rev. C. W. King remarks that ‘the practice of engraving licentious subjects on rings was very prevalent in Ancient Rome. Ateius Capito, a famous lawyer of the Republic, highly censured the practice of wearing figures of deities on rings, on account of the profanation to which they were exposed.’
Roman.
The same distinguished writer mentions an antique gold ring now in the Florentine Cabinet, set with a cameo, which evidently shows that it belonged to some Roman sporting gentleman, who, as the poet says, ‘held his wife a little higher than his horse,’ for it is set with a cameo-head of a lady, of tolerable work in garnet, and on the shoulders of the ring are intaglio busts of his two favourite steeds; also a garnet with their names cut in the gold on each side—Amor and Ospis. On the outside of the shank is the legend Pomphonica, ‘success to thee, Pomphius,’ very neatly engraved on the gold.
In the possession of Captain Spratt is a remarkably fine specimen of early Greek work, a large ring of thin gold, set with an intaglio on very fine red sard, oval, of most unusual size, representing a figure of Abundantia beside an altar; the edge of the setting slightly bended; the stone held in its position by thin points of gold. This most important gem is in its original gold setting, and was purchased in June 1845 at Milo, where it had been found the previous year, within a short distance of the theatre, near the position in which the Venus of Milo had been discovered about thirty years previously.
Such was the value attached by the Romans to the setting of gems in rings, that Nonius, a senator, is said to have been proscribed by Antony, for the sake of a precious opal, valued at 20,000l. of our money, which he would not relinquish.
The taste for engraved gems, ‘grew,’ observes the Rev. C. W. King, ‘into an ungovernable passion, and was pushed by its noble votaries to the last degree of extravagance. Pliny seriously attributes to nothing else the ultimate downfall of the Republic; for it was in a quarrel about a ring at a certain auction that the feud originated between the famous demagogue Drusus, and the chief senator Cæpio, which led to the breaking out of the Social War, and to all its fatal consequences.’
In the Braybrooke Collection is a gold Roman finger-ring, with two hands clasping a turquoise in token of concord: this device, a favourite one in mediæval times, has thus an early origin. In the same collection is a beautiful Romano-British gold ring, chased to imitate the scales of a serpent, which it resembles in form: the eyelet-holes have been set with some coloured gem, or paste, now lost.