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METHODS OF WEARING 53
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The
speaker calls upon his hearers to " look upon the left hand of this man
to whose authority we bow, but who with a woman's vanity, is adorned
like a woman." The Bishop of Seville also adduces the declaration of
Crassus who, as an explanation for his wearing two rings, although an
old man, said that he did so in the belief that they would further
increase his already immense wealth.83 Hence he must have thought them endowed with some magic power.
One
explanation of the greater supply of ancient gems of the period
subsequent to the Augustan Age, as compared with those of an earlier
date, has been found in the increasing popularity of ring-wearing.
Horace (65-8 b.c.) already considers three rings on the hand as marking the limit of fashionable wear, but Martial (ab. 40-104 a.D.), writing
a century later, tells of a Roman dandy who wore six rings on each
finger. As an instance of the multiplication of seal-rings, Pliny states84 that the signet proper had to be placed for safe-keeping in a special receptacle, which was then stamped with the impression of another seal, lest some improper use should be made of the signet, the equivalent of an individual signature.85
When
the usage of wearing rings set with plain or engraved precious stones
became general in Rome, special caskets were made—many of them of
ivory—to contain the rings and other small jewels. The name dactylioiheca, " ring-treasury," was given to such a
183 Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, " Opera Omnis," vol. iv, col. 702, Etymologise, lib. xix, cap. 33, vol. Ixxxii of Migne's Patrologia Latina, Paris, 1850.
84 " Historia Naturalis," lib. xxxiii, cap. 6.
85 Duffield Osborne, " Engraved Gems," New York, 1912, p. 107.
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