1856.] Occasions on which Rings were not Worn. fixed the wearer, who, starting up, him with a glassy stare, communicating such electric influences to his mind, and to that of the candleholder, and also such speed to the legs of both, that in a few seconds the churchyard was cleared, the resurrection men were trembling at home, and the lady, left in quiet possession of the lanthorn, was returning to her husband's door; there she knocked, and was refused admittance, till, showing the wedding ring, and convincing him also by her voice that she was no spectre, but his own wife, he joyfully received her again to bed and board; after which she became the mother of three fine 'post obit' sons, who, with such a story to tell, were of course the admiration of the neighbourhood. Adhesent as the ancient world was generally to rings, there were however occasions on which they renounced them; thus, rings were put off in seasons of public calamity or of domestic griefs. On the death of Augustus,' says Suetonius, ‘men changed their gold for iron rings;' and Livy mentions two other instances of such abandonment on public grounds at Rome,-viz., on the signing of a discreditable peace with the Samnites, and on the promotion of a parvenu to the deliberations of the august body of the legislature, tantum Flavii comitia indignationes habuerunt ut plerique nobilium anulos aureos et phaleras deposuerunt;' where, however, we may presume that personal pique and aristocratic spleen mingled not a little with more patriotic feelings. In private life such deponing of rings was common under circumstances either of disgrace or of bereavement. The son of Gabinius, when he threw himself a suppliant at the feet of Memmius, took care, in order to conciliate favour, to strip off all his rings and cast them on the ground, indicating thereby the depth of his humiliation and grief; to this case, related by Valerius Maximus, many others might be added. In family losses, again, the surviving members signified their distress to the public by amercing themselves of finger and other ornaments, which was equivalent to our modern fashion of putting on 27 black dresses for mourning. Rings Cæsar sometimes did so; and on one occasion this habit gave rise to an amusing mistake. He was haranguing the troops, and exhorting them to show the same valour they had displayed in many former engagements; while dwelling with eagerness on the subject, he was observed frequently to lay one hand upon the other, and, moreover, to take off and replace a ring. This action, seen by many who were not within ear-shot of the harangue, deceived the men into a belief that their general was promising, and enforcing the promise by this gesticulation, that, if they discharged their duty faithfully, he would procure for them the 'jus anuli,'* or right to appear in a gold ring, with all the annexed privileges, viz., the honours of knighthood, a handsome pension of four hundred larger sesterces; and, after the senate (who occupied the orchestra), the fourteen first benches at the theatre. The shoutings and vivats of the army on such a supposed announcement of promotion and universal nobility, must have been terribly loud and effective, and Cæsar's dilemma, thus called on to explain the mistake, no trifling embarrassment. WEARING OF RINGS. Before closing our miscellany on ancient rings, we have yet a few words more to append, regarding their wear. In respect to priority of metal or metals employed in these trinkets, we can have no very certain information. It would appear from the early notices of gold, bronze, and iron rings in holy writ, as well as from the discovery of all three amongst the ruins of Ben Assan and Egyptian Thebes (sites prolific in jewelries, supposed to be contemporary with Moses, and with the yet anterior days of the patriarch Joseph), that all these metals were wrought up into anuli from the very earliest epochs of our race; there seems, however, to be much probability from what we know to have occurred elsewhere in their later history, that here also the commonest metals, though hardest to work, would be chosen in preference to those which, however malleable they might be, were more scarce, and therefore not so easily brought to the hammer. Some nations we know, as Lacedæmon and Macedonia, restricted themselves entirely to the baser metals; and the Romans, according to Pliny, were quite as ferruginous in their finger gear as either of these people. The very first gold ring seen at Rome was not till four hundred and thirty-two years A.U.C. On the first introduction of these costly gauds, the privilege of wearing them was confined entirely to ambassadors, who, though permitted to. adorn one finger with so signal an ornament, did so more to conciliate the barbarian world around-who were mightily addicted to glittering toys-than from any innate love of the metal. The persons who next showed themselves so dight, were the great men of the State, who, however, donned the gold only when discharging some high function, or on particularly solemn state occasions; putting them by to resume an ordinary iron hoop for ordinary wear when the official duty was over. Even when it was optional, and in days when luxury had already begun to make progress in the State, Marius, amid the blaze of jewelry of the conquered Jugurtha, which was exhibited ovanti patriæ, performed his own personal part of that grand military pageant in a ring of iron. Not even in Augustus's day was the wear of this *The jus anuli was very arbitrary and capricious: Augustus gave this permission to wear gold rings to the Libertini-freed men-an abuse corrected by Tiberius, but this amendment was lost sight of after his own death, because the venal senate wished to cede the privilege to the freed men of the Emperors Claudius, Galba, Vitellius, and Domitian, to curry favour with them. Severus pushed the practice to extremity, granting it even to the common soldiery. After which Justinian gave it a coup de grace, by permitting all who could pay for them to wear gold rings. To this privilege Juvenal alludes-Satire 14th-Effice summam Bis septem ordinibus quam lex dignatur Othonis;' and again: 'Sume duos equites fac tertia quadringenta.' It was an iron ring which Seleucus, the Macedonian founder of the Syrian monarchy, dropped into the Euphrates. Wearing of Rings. 1856.] plebeian metal confined to the plebiscite or to the needy. Many rich and sensible men still remained who looked upon rings as their ancestors had done, with an eye to utility only, and thought that, provided a clean intaglio for sealing was produced, it mattered very little with what material the impression was stamped on the wax, seeing that, as Nazianzius writes, its sigillary validity was in no ways affected by the worth of the metal.* Though it is not improbable, as we have said, that in the infancy of states, use would be more thought of than adornment, and rings might be made of the same metal as served to secure the annulate ancles of bondsmen, yet the grey iron (as though it had been everywhere subject to Midas's touch) became glittering gold. For a while the more modern key was associated with the ring in the same instrument, but as such an appendage was found to be highly inconvenient to the wearer, who could neither shake hands nor do anything else in comfort, they were soon divorced; the office of protecting household stuff' which they had shared together, was henceforth transferred almost entirely to the key, and the ring, now having very little to occupy it, became a handsome and expensive sinecurist, always looking well, and able with the wearer's assistance to make a favourable impression when called upon. Gold rings when once introduced became epidemic: Pliny traces the origin of the public taste 29 for them at Rome to Pompey's dis play of the Mithridatic jewelries through her streets,† and afterwards to the many dactylotheca or ringboxes which were hung up as votive offerings at the different temples in and about the city. Pompey himself dedicated one full box of costly rings to the temple of Capitoline Jove; Scaurus a little before had made a similar dedication to another temple; Marcellus, Octavius's son, that Apollo might not be jealous, placed one at his service in Phoebus's temple on the Palatine Mount; and Julius Cæsar far outdid the magnificence of all other gifts by presenting no less than six wellfilled cases to Venus, his ancestral mother.' After thus liberally furnishing the Coelicola with gold rings, the Romans themselves began to be exceedingly addicted to the gear: every person that had money enough bought one, and thought to make himself somebody by exhibiting it on his finger. At length even parvenus and slaves sported magnificent gold rings, and sometimes of such a size and weight as to excite the spleen and envy of poor bards, who had probably nothing so handsome to show. Martial spurts off two very spiteful epigrams against one Zoilus, charging him in the first with swamping a fine sardonyx in a pound of gold, and in the second twitting him with carrying as much of the precious metal in rings on his hands as whilom he had worn of iron anuli round his feet! This writer, speaking of the importance of the sacraments, uses the following illustration in support of their intrinsic authority. Here are two rings, one of gold, another of iron, both bear the same head of sovereignty; you take two impressions, and looking at them together, cannot tell which is which; for however skilful in appreciating differences, you will not be able to discern any between the two, nor, indeed, is there the slightest; the only difference, and that not appreciable, being the difference of the metals-so in regard to baptism; he who baptises may be a good or a bad man, as the material of the seals may be gold or iron, but the seal itself is the same, let whoever will affix it.' + Victoria tamen illa Pompeii (Mithridatica) ad margaritas gemmasque mores inclinavit; sicut L. Scipionis et Cn. Manlii ad cælatum argentum et vestes Attalicas, et triclinia ærea; sicut L. Mummii ad Corinthia et tabulas pictas.—(Pl.) Of these poor ancle-ringed slaves, Apuleius gives a description as vivid and shocking as it is circumstantially correct. 'Di boni! quales illi homunculi vibicibus livedinis totam cutem depicti, dorsumque plagosum scissili centunculo magis inumbrati quam obtecti; nonnulli exiguo tegili tantummodo pubem injecti; cuncti sic tunicati ut essent per anulos manifesti, frontes literati, semirasi et pedes anulati,' But there is a tide in the affairs of men; these servi ad lapidem' having obtained manumission, got leave, subsequently, first to gild the iron ring of servitude, and then to aspire to rank, like their betters, in one of pure gold: Mutavitque genus, lævæque ignobile ferrum Exuit, et celso natorum æquavit honore.-(Papin). Thy burthened hand can scarce sustain its gold; Thy feet scarce carried heavier rings of old; and indignation supplies Juvenal in lieu of a muse while he quits his usual lofty moral tone to be censorious and almost spiteful against one Crispinus, for the display of a large number of these pretty gewgaws: When a born slave, a fellow from the Nile, Whom e'en Canopus had accounted vile; Crispinus, cumbered with his purple vest, Waves the hot hand with lightest gold opprest, And sweats beneath the weight of summer gold: What! from the pen of satire still withhold! The gold ring was at one time single, and confined to one finger of one hand; but it soon sought and found a companion, then a third was added, then each finger had its own ring, which was designated by a particular name; till at length the fashion reaching its height, all the phalanges of all the fingers of both hands were hooped with gold, and One blazed in expensive gems. thumb and the middle fingert (the first from its extreme awkwardness as a ring wearer, and the other from the ill repute in which it was held) were long ringless; but even these, when all the world was emulous to exhibit as much jewelry as possible about the person, became loaded like the rest. As at Rome, so at Athens: Lucian speaks of a Greek who bound sixteen round his fingers; and Aristophanes, several centuries before, mentions persons (whom he designates by a longlinked word of many syllables), ringed-from-the-roots-to-the-very tips-of-the-fingers! Finally, the land of Egypt, to which country or to India all the other countries of the world were indebted for the first acquaintance with rings, learnt from these in return the abuse of them; a fact of which any one may easily be convinced by inspecting the lids of sarcophagi, whereon may be seen lay figures displaying hands laden with rings, in emulation of any Greek or Roman exquisite. C. D. B. *Heliogabalus is particularly signalised for the size of his thumbs, which were so large that he used, whenever it pleased him, to adopt his wife's bracelets to ornament them. This finger, which Pliny tells us our ancestors and those of our allies, the French, used particularly to select for anulation, was in exceedingly bad repute for a long time, both in Greece and at Rome, and to point any one out with this finger was the greatest insult that could be offered: thus the old satirist introduces Democritus pointing the finger of scorn at the jade Fortune Quum fortunæ ipse minaci Mandaret laqueum, mediumque ostenderet unguem. And Martial recommends his friend to make merry at the expense of any who should serve him so, and pay him off in his own coin Rideto multum, qui te, Sextile cinædum Dixerit, et digitum porrigito medium. The disesteem in which this middle finger was formerly held, was partly in conse quence of the dirty uses to which surgeons applied it, as being the longest, whence its other name of medicus, and partly from the unsightliness of its form as seen porrect from between its two neighbouring fingers reflexed. A 31 FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.* CURIOUS book might be written on the revisions of historical judgments, whether as regards individual characters or the general Without complexion of events. going very far back, we can discover that scarcely any age or person retains at the end of a century, the position, whether good or ill, which they held at the beginning of it. Hume supplanted Echard and Carte, but his reputation was punched full of deadly holes by Mr. Brodie. Mr. Stirling has shown up Robertson's inaccuracy; while Bishop Burnet, whom writers of all sorts and shades of politics took pride in girding at, has lately received from Mr. Macaulay a new diploma for trustworthiness. Mr. Grote has attempted to show that Fanny' turns out to have been no Such vicissitudes of opinion affect can neither sympathise largely nor This is neither the spirit nor the upon In many respects Mr. Froude's volumes are a just and warrantable protest against hasty and superficial opinions of this kind. Of all eras in English history, that of the Tudor kings has been assumed to be the one in which parliaments were most servile, the nation most apathetic, and the power of the Crown most * History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. Vols. I. and II. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1856. VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXIX. C |