The Latin epigrammatist whose brief, caustic poems are a mine of information regarding the customs and costumes of the Romans in the Imperial age, wrote the following couplet, probably designed for an inscription upon a dactyliotheca, or ring-case:[97]

“Often does the heavy ring slip off the anointed fingers; but if you confide your jewel to me, it will be safe.”

In the large ring collections of royal treasuries or of wealthy nobles in mediæval times, the rings with precious-stone settings were often classified according to the particular stones, and then those of each of these classes were strung on one or more small sticks or wands (bacula). Among King John’s (1167–1216) jewels in the Tower of London, an inventory of 1205 lists several such baculæ, one with 26 diamonds, two with 40 and 47 emeralds, respectively, another shorter one with 7 “good” topazes and still another with 9 turquoises.[98] Jewellers also, were wont to keep their rings strung on such small rods, an example of this being shown in a portrait depicting a jeweller, painted by an unknown German artist of the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

With other royal collections of rings the classified set rings were kept already in ancient times in dactyliothecæ, or ring-caskets, the term dactyliotheca coming to be used later more broadly as an equivalent for “ring collection” or even “gem collection.” In 1272 the Crown Jewels of Henry III of England included a number of these ring boxes, four of them for 106 ruby, or balas-ruby rings, two for 38 emerald rings, one for 20 sapphire rings, and another for 11 topaz rings and one set with a peridot.[99]

The following description of a jade (nephrite) ringbox of seventeenth-century Indian workmanship, in the Heber R. Bishop Collection, is given in one of the great folios treating of these wonderful jades.[100]

A small covered box of three compartments in the form of three compressed plums (or similar fruit) held together by the twigs and leaves of a leafy branch which projects to form a handle, and hollowed out to form a receptacle for finger-rings, studs or the like. The box proper is decorated underneath with leaves carved in slight relief, and is flanged on the edges to receive the three upper segments of the fruit which forms the cover and are similarly decorated on top with plum blossoms and held together by a twig, a leaf, and an upright bud which serves as a handle. The whole is very daintily cut and polished, and is so thin and of such translucency that print in contact with it can easily be read through it. The mineral is remarkably pure and resembles a pale transparent horn.

While the Greeks and Romans did not usually wear rings on the middle finger, the Gauls and Britons adorned it in this way. In the sixteenth century it was customary to assign rings as follows, according to the quality of the wearer:[101]

There is a curious Hindu superstition to the effect that anyone who wears a ring on the middle finger will probably be attacked and bitten by a scorpion. For this reason the Hindus are said to avoid wearing any rings on this finger, although the others are laden with them, each finger-joint having its special adornment.[102] In the Græco-Roman world also there was a prejudice against decorating the middle finger with a ring.

Regarding the liberality with which the Greeks and Romans of the second century of our era used ring adornments for their fingers, the great Greek humorist Lucian gives testimony. In his writing entitled “The Cock,” he makes a character relate a dream in which the dreamer thought that a rich man had just died and had left him his fortune. Thereupon, in his dream, he saw himself arrayed in splendid raiment and wearing sixteen rings on his fingers.[103]