Chap. 6.J THE EIGHT OF WEARING GOLD EINGS. 81 



rings !^^ How happy the times, how truly innocent, in which 

 no seal was ever put to anything ! At the present daj^, on the 

 contrary, our very food even and our drink have to be preserved 

 from theft®^ through the agency of the ring : a result owing to 

 those legions of slaves, those throngs of foreigners which are 

 introduced into our houses, multitudes so numerous that we 

 require the services of a nomenclator^'^ even, to tell us the 

 names of our own servants. Very different was it in the times 

 of our forefathers, when each person possessed a single servant 

 only, one of his master's own lineage, called Marcipor or 

 Lucipor,^^ from his master's name, as the case might be, and 

 taking all his meals with him in common ; when, too, there 

 was no occasion for taking precautions at home by keeping a 

 watch upon the domestics. But at the present day, we not 

 only procure dainties which are sure to be pilfered, but hands 

 to pilfer them as well ; and so far is it from being sufficient to 

 have the very keys sealed, that the signet-ring is often taken 

 from off the owner's finger while he is overpowered with sleep 

 or lying on his death-bed. ^^ 



Indeed the most important transactions of life are now made 

 to depend upon this instrument, though at what period this first 

 began to be the case, I am at a loss to say. It would appear, 

 however, so far as foreign nations are concerned, that we may 

 admit the importance attached to it, from the days of Poly- 

 crates,^^ the tyrant of Samos, whose favourite ring, after being 



88 He alludes, probably, to forgeries perpetrated through the agency of 

 false signets. 



89 Plautus, Cicero, Horace, and Martial, each in his own age, bears 

 testimony to the truth of this statement. 



90 Or remembrancer ; a slave whose duty it was to remind his master of 

 the name of each member of his household; see B. xxix. c. 8. Athenaeus, 

 B. vi., speaks of as many as twenty thousand slaves belonging to one 

 household. Demetrius, the freedman of Pompey, mentioned in B. xxxv. 

 c. 58, had a retinue of slaves equal to an army in amount. 



91 Meaning "Marci puer," or "Luci puer" — "Marcius' hoy," or 

 " Lucius' boy." 



92 Suetonius says, c. 73, that Tiberius, in his last illness, awoke after a 

 long lethargy, and demanded his signet-ring, which his son-in-law, Cali- 

 gula, had removed from his finger, under the supposition that he was 

 dead. Macro, to avoid any unpleasant results in the way of punishment, 

 caused the emperor to be smothered witli the pillows and bedclothes. 



93 This famous and somewhat improbable story of the ring of Polycrates 

 is told by Valerius Maximus, B. vi. c. 9 ; Herodotus, B. iii. ; and Cicero, 

 De Finibus, B. iv. Pliny again mentions it in B. xsxvii. cc. 2, 4. 



VOL. VI. G 



