BOOK XXXIII. VI. 25-27 



of the circle with a lighter material, in case of their 

 dropping, is a safer precaution for their anxiety 

 aboiit their gems ; others enclose poisons underneath 

 the stones in their rings, as did Demosthenes,'^ the 

 greatest orator of Greece, and they wear their rings 

 as a means of taking their own Hves. Finally, a 

 very great number of the crimes connected with 

 money are carried out by means of rings.^ To think 

 what Hfe was in the days of old, and what innocence 

 existed when nothing was sealed ! WTiereas now- 

 adays even articles of food and drink have to be 

 protected against theft by means of a ring : this is 

 the progress achieved by our legions of slaves — a 

 foreign rabble in one's home, so that an attendant 

 to tell people's names now has to be employed even 

 in the case of one's slaves I This was not the way 

 with by-gone generations, when a single servant 

 for each master, a member of his master's clan, 

 Marcius's boy or Lucius's boy, took all his meals 

 with the family in common, nor was there any need 

 of precautions in the home to keep watch on the 

 domestics. Nowadays we acquire sumptuous viands 

 only to be pilfered and at the same time acquire 

 people to pilfer them, and it is not enough to keep 

 our keys themselves under seal : while we are fast 

 asleep or on our death-beds, our rings are sHpped off 

 our fingers; and the more important concerns of our 

 hfe have begun to centre round that tool, though 

 when this began is doubtful. Still it seems we can 

 reahze the importance this article possesses abroad 

 in the case of the tyrant of Samos, Polycrates, 

 who flung his favourite ring into the sea and had it 

 brought back to him inside a fish which had been 

 caught : Polycrates himself was put to death '^ 



