the
Persians believed that he had satisfactorily conformed to the court
ceremonial. His little ruse was rewarded by a favorable reception of
his requests by the Persian King, who had long been offended by the
obstinate refusal of the Greeks to render him the homage he regarded as
his due.14
The
iron ring of the Romans, accounted for in popular fancy by the tale of
the rock and link ring of Prometheus, probably came to the Romans from
the Etruscans, who appear to have owed the fashion to the Greeks, and
Pliny notes in his " Naturalis Historia," written about 75 a.D., that even then the Lacedaemonians, with true Spartan sobriety, still wore iron rings.15 Roman tradition carried back the introduction of such rings to the age of Numa Pompilius, about 700 b.c., and
there is evidence that, at a later time at least, they were regarded as
symbols of victory when worn on the hand of a successful general, a
late instance being the wearing of an iron ring by Marius at his
triumph for the victory over Jugurtha in 107 b.c.16
The
progressive changes in the Roman regulations and customs governing the
wearing of rings and the material of which they should be made have
been stated in a concise and convenient form by M. Deloche, and his
conclusions are of considerable value, based as they are upon a very
careful study of the classic sources and their best interpreters in the
past.17
14 iEliani, " Varia historia," Lib. I, cap. xxi.
15 Lib. xxxiii, cap. iv.
16 Ibid., loc. cit.
17 M.
Deloche, " Le port des anneaux dans l'antiquité romaine, et dans les
premiers siècles du moyen âge " ; extrait des Mémoires de l'Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, vol. xxxv, Paris, 1896, pp. 4, 5.
