History Of Rings.

HISTORY OF RINGS .

INVENTED somewhere iu the babyhood of the world , the origin of the circlet we call a finger-ring is lost in prehistoric darkness . The Greeks in their mythology credit Jupiter with its invention . Their story is that when the god forgave one Prometheus , and released him from his penance in the Caucasus , where a vulture made a daily free lunch of his liver , and where he had sworn to keep him eternally , he , in order not to break his oath , caused an iron ring to be made with a fragment of Caucasian granite set iu it . This

ornament the released stealer of Celestial fire always wore to carry out the threat that he should be bound to the rock for ever . Whoever did create them , rings are certainly almost coeval with people who had fingers to wear them on . Seal-rings are said to have been an invention of the Lacedemonians who used them to make their money-chests more secure . In Biblical times money was made in the form of rings . Great quantities of this peculiar currency , which figures frequently in the sepulchral frescoes of Egypt , have boon found iu different countries , including Ireland . The Greeks put rings in the urns which held the ashes of their cremated friends as tokens of

affection . Rings were a favourite ornament among the Romans , who not only wore them themselves , but decorated the fingers of their sculptured gods with them too . These were changed on special days and festivals , according to set rules . In times of sorrow the Romans exchanged their gold circlets for iron ones , and they had heavy and light ones for winter and summer . It was a sign of the greatest poverty when any subject of the great empire had to sell his rings to live . Some of the Roman rings rivalled that presented to

President Pierce by his California admirers in 1852 , which was [; of golcl , and weighed a pound . There is scarcely a malleable or tenuous substance of which rings have not been composed . All the metals have been brought into requisition . Iron was the first . Then gold was mixed with it , as by the Romans , and then gold alone was used . Among the spoils of one of Hannibal ' s victories were three

bushels of gold rings .. Rings of iron were worn by conquerors till Caius Marins changed the fashion to gold . Bronze , jet , cornelian , glass , emerald , and amber have been used . Poor people wore rings of ivory and blue porcelain . The rings of the ancients in many cases were of iron gilded . Iron rings used to be made with a-old seals .

An incident mentioned b y Plutarch shows how distinctive a o-old rin " once was . When China and Caius Maritts were slaughtering the citizens of Rome , the slaves of Corimtns bid their master in the house and took a dead body out of the street from among the slain and hanged it by the neck ; then they put a gold ring upon the finger , aud showed the corpse ' in that condition to Marius' executioners , after which they dressed it for the funeral and buried it as their master ' s body . Rings in those days were very different affairs

from the flimsy bands of metal now in use . Some of the Egyptian signets were of extraordinary size . Sir Gardiner Wilkinson mentions an ancient Egyptian one which contained about twent y guineas worth of o-old . It consisted of a massive ring , half an inch in its largest diameter . Exceptionally ponderous rings were those made to wear on the thumbs ! An ancient swell , loaded down with his weighty ornamentscould hardluse his fingers at all

, y . A curious form some old rings assumed was that of a strap aud buckle , like a common belt or collar . They were formed of pieces of metal joined so as to make a pliable band , and were wrapped around the finger and buckled there like so much ribbon . Rings in the form of serpents , with their tails in their mouths , and which opened in the same way , were also great favourites .