[Illustration: Modern Egyptian Ring, with Double Keepers.] Tavernier states in his ‘Travels’ that the Persians did not make gold rings, their religion forbidding the wearing of any article of that metal during prayers, it would have been too troublesome to take them off every time they performed their devotions. The gems mounted in gold rings, sold by Tavernier to the King, were reset in silver by native workmen. The custom of wearing rings may have been introduced into Greece from Asia, and into Italy from Greece. They served the twofold purpose, ornamental and useful, being employed as a seal, which was called _sphragis_, a name given to the gem or stone on which figures were engraved. The Homeric poems make mention of ear-rings only, but in the later Greek legends the ancient heroes are represented as wearing finger-rings. Counterfeit stones in rings are mentioned in the time of Solon. Transparent stones when extracted from the remains of the original iron-rings of the ancients are sometimes found backed by a leaf of red gold as a foil.[4] The use of coloured foils was merely to deceive and impose upon the unwary, by giving to a very inferior jewel the finest colour. Solon made a law prohibiting sellers of rings from keeping the model of a ring they had sold. The Lacedæmonians, according to the laws of Lycurgus, had only iron rings, despising those of gold; either that the King devised thereby to retrench luxury, or not to permit the use of them. The Etruscans and the Sabines wore rings at the period of the foundation of Rome, 753 B.C. The Etruscans made rings of great value. They have been found of every variety--with precious stones, of massive gold, very solid, with engraved stones of remarkable beauty. Among Etruscan rings in the Musée Nap. III. the table of one offers a representation, enlarged, of the story of Admētus, the King of Pheræ in Thessaly. He took part in the expedition of the Argonauts, and sued for the hand of Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, who promised him to her on condition that he should come to her in a chariot drawn by lions and boars. This feat Admētus performed by the assistance of Apollo, who served him, according to some accounts, out of attachment to him, or, according to others, because he was obliged to serve a mortal for one year, for having slain the Cyclops. [Illustration: Etruscan (Admētus).] [Illustration: Representation of Admētus.] [Illustration: Etrusca.] Among rings taken out of the tombs there are some in the form of a knot or of a serpent. They are frequently found with shields of gold, and of that form which we call Gothic, that is elliptical and pointed, called by foreigners _ogive_, with raised subjects chiselled on the gold, or with onyxs of the same form, but polished and surrounded with gold. There are some particular rings which appear more adapted to be used as seals than rings, and they have on the shields, relievos of much more arched, and almost Egyptian, form.[5]