As
an example of Roman art found in Egypt, we have a spiral ring of
serpent form, either extremity terminating in a bust, of Isis and
Serapis respectively. The conjecture has been made that this ring, and
others of the type, may have been intended to figure the reigning
emperor and empress of Rome under the types of Isis and of Serapis, the
latter a Grœco-Egyptian divinity as worshipped in Alexandria and in the
Roman world, though having a distinctly Egyptian form in the national
pantheon as Asar-Hapi, or Osiris-Apis. The rings of the type described
have the advantage of being easily adapted to a finger of any size,
since pressure at both extremities would enlarge the girth of the
single spiral.4
In his Etymologias, Isidore of Seville defines three of the types of rings worn in ancient times, the ungulus, the Samothracius and the thynnius.6 The ungulus was set with a gem and owed its designation to the fancy that the stone was as closely attached to the gold of the ring as a human nail (ungulus) was
to the flesh of the finger. The Samothracian ring was of gold, but had
an iron setting. Lucretius in the sixth book of his great philosophic
and scientific poem, " De Natura Rerum," in speaking of the magnet to
which he attributes negative and positive powers, of repulsion and of
attraction, relates that when, in an experiment, Samothracian rings
were placed in a brazen dish beneath which a piece of magnetic iron was
moved to and fro, he had seen the rings leap up, as though to flee from
an enemy. The third type of ring was the thynnius, the name indicating, according to Isidore, that it was made in Bithynia, called
4 Figured in Caylus, " Receuil d'antiquités," vol. ii, p. 310.
6
Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, " Opera Omnia," vol. iv, col. 702,
Etymologias, lib. xix, cap. 32; vol. Ixxxii of Migne's Patrologia
Latina, Paris, 1850.
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