Chap. 3.] THE JEWEL OF PXEEHUS. 887 



stones increased to such a boundless extent, that Polycrates,^ 

 the tyrant of Samos, who ruled over the islands and the ad- 

 jacent shores, when he admitted that his good fortune had been 

 too great, deemed it a sufficient expiation for all this enjoy- 

 ment of happiness, to make a voluntary sacrifice of a single 

 precious stone ; thinking thereby to balance accounts with the 

 inconstancy of fortune, and, by this single cause for regret, 

 abundantly to buy off every ill-will she might entertain. 

 "Weary, therefore, of his continued prosperity, he embarked on 

 board a ship, and, putting out to sea, threw the ring which he 

 wore into the waves. It so happened, however, that a fish of re- 

 markable size, one destined for the table of a king, swallowed 

 the jewel, as it would have done a bait ; and then, to com- 

 plete the portentous omen, restored it again to the owner in the 

 royal kitchen, by the ruling hand of a treacherous^ fortune. 



The stone in this ring, it is generally agreed, was a sardonyx,* 

 and they still show one at Eome, which, if we believe the 

 story, was this identical stone. It is enclosed in a horn of gold, 

 and was deposited, by the Emperor Augustus, in the Temple 

 of Concord, where it holds pretty nearly the lowest rank among 

 a multitude of other jewels that are preferable to it. 



CHAP. 3. — THE JEWEL OF PTEEHTJS. 



Next in note after this ring, is the jewel that belonged to 

 3 See B. xxxiii. c. 6. 



* For ultimately, Oroetes, the satrap of Sardes, contrived to allure him 

 into his power, and had him crucified, B.C. 522. Fuller, in his Worthies, 

 p. 370, tells a very similar story of the loss and recovery of his ring by 

 one Anderson, a merchant of Newcastle-on-Tyne; and Zuinglius gives a 

 similar statement with reference to Arnulph, duke of Lorraine, who dropped 

 his ring into the Moselle, and recovered it from the belly of a fish. 



s See Chapter 23. According to Herodotus, iPausanias, Dionysius of 

 Halicarnassus, and Suidas, the stone was an emerald ; and Lessing thinks 

 that there was no figure engraved on it. See Chapter 4 of this Book. 

 Without vouching for the truth of it, we give the following extract from 

 the London Journal, Vol. xxiii. No. 592. "A vine-dresser of Albano, 

 near Eome, is said to have found in a vineyard, the celebrated ring of 



Polycrates. The stone is of considerable size, and oblong in form. The 



engraving on it, by Theodore of Samos, the son of Talikles, is of extra- 

 ordinary fineness and beauty. It represents a lyre, with three bees flying 

 about ; below, on the right, a dolphin ; on the left, the head of a bull. 

 The name of the engraver is inscribed in Greek characters. The upper 

 surface of the stone is slightly concave, not highly polished, and one 

 corner broken. It is asserted that the possessor has been ofi'ered 50,000 

 dollars for it." 



B B 2 



