RING SYMBOL OF UNION OF KING AND SEA 345 



Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, was so proverbial for a good 

 fortune, which had never met with check or disaster, that 

 Amasis, King of Egypt, fearing the effects of the (pOovoc of 

 the Gods on Polycrates and consequently on their newly-formed 

 alliance, advised him to propitiate them by getting rid of one 

 of his most valued possessions. Accordingly the Tyrant cast 

 into the sea ^ his seal-ring of extraordinary beauty, which in 

 a few days was found in the belly of a fish and restored to him. 



This last shock of happy fortune was too much for Amasis, 

 who broke off his alliance and thus left Polycrates free to aid 

 Cambyses in his invasion and conquest of Egypt. It is fair 

 to add, even at the expense of this pretty fish story, that 

 Grote (IV. 323) holds that Polycrates himself broke off the 

 Egyptian to effect the more powerful Persian alliance. 



^ Some recent scholars have suggested that in the stories of Polycrates 

 throwing his ring into the sea, and of Theseus proving his parentage by a like 

 sacrifice, we should detect traces of an early custom, by which the maritime 

 king married the sea-goddess — a custom perpetuated in the symbolical union 

 between the Doges of Venice and the Adriatic. This ingenious hypothesis 

 was first worked out by S. Reinach, " Le Mariage avec la mer," in Revue arcMolo- 

 gique (1905), ii. i ff. {—-id. Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Paris, 1906), ii. 266 ff.). 



Note. — For kind advice at " parlous times " I am indebted to my friends. 

 Dr. Alan H. Gardiner and Miss M. A. Murray. The latter has doubled the 

 debt by reading my proofs. 



