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 $@dvoc 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. 
1 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 archéolo- 
gique (1905), ii. 1 fl. (=td. Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Paris, 1906), ii. 266 ff.). 
Notre.—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. 
