related
by Herodotus regarding this signet. M. Reinach holds that when
Polycrates sailed out to sea to cast away his ring, he was engaged in
the performance of a ceremony similar to that performed annually by
the Doges of Venice, when they wedded the Adriatic by casting a ring
into its waters. Polycrates, as a " thalassocrat," or ruler of the sea,
celebrated in this way his mastery over this element, and M. Reinach
believes that this act, told as an isolated happening by Herodotus, was
really a ceremony repeated each year. The conjecture is an ingenious
one, although it may not be generally accepted.16
The signet of the Persian sovereign, Xerxes, is said to have borne the nude figure of a woman with disheveled hair.17
This depicted Anahita, the Persian goddess of fertilization and also of
war, a divinity closely resembling the Assyrian Ishtar in her
attributes and functions. According to other ancient authorities,
however, the design was either a portrait of Xerxes himself, that of
Cyrus the Great, or else a representation of the horse whose neighing
legend states to have been received as an omen determining the choice
of Darius Hystaspes, father of Xerxes, as King of Persia.
In
Grasco-Roman times, a certain Eurates is represented to be the owner
of a ring set with an engraved signet bearing the head of the Pythian
Apollo, and to have boasted that the ring literally " spoke " to him.
Of course, the satirist Lucian, who tells this tale, only offers it as
a specimen of the lies told by Eurates, still the
16 Reinach, " Cultes, Mythes et Religions," Paris, 1906, vol. ii, p. 214.
17 Duffield Osborne, " Gem Engraving," New York, 1912, p. 287.
