In the course of time it became customary for all the senators, chief magistrates, and the _equites_ to wear a gold seal-ring. This practice, which was subsequently termed the _jus annuli aurei_, or the _jus annulorum_, remained for several centuries at Rome their exclusive privilege, while others continued to wear the iron ring. In Plutarch’s Life of Caius Marius he mentions that the slaves of Cornutus concealed their master at home, and hanging up by the neck the body of some obscure person, and putting a gold ring on his finger, they showed him to the guards of Marius, and then wrapping up the body as if it were their master’s, they interred it. Magistrates and governors of provinces seem to have possessed the privilege of conferring upon inferior officers, or such persons as had distinguished themselves, the right of wearing a gold ring. Verres thus presented his secretary with a gold ring in the assembly at Syracuse. [Illustration: Roman.] Montfaucon mentions in his ‘Antiquity Explained’ (English Edition, 1722, vol. iii. p. 146), a Greek seal-ring, which has the shape of a crescent. An illustration is here given of a similarly-formed Roman ring, with the letters Q. S. P. Q., Quintanus Senatus Populusque, from the ‘Gemmæ Antiquæ Litteratæ.’ Some wore rings of gold, covered with a plate of iron. Trimalchion wore two rings, one upon the little finger of his left hand, which was a large gilt one, and the other of gold, set with stars of iron upon the middle of the ring-finger. Some rings were hollow, and others solid. The _Flamines Diales_ could only wear the former. During the Empire the right of granting the privilege of a gold ring belonged to the emperors, and some were not very scrupulous in conferring this distinction. Severus and Aurelian granted this privilege to all Roman soldiers; Justinian allowed all citizens of the empire to wear such rings. But there always seems to have been a difficulty in restricting the use of the gold ring. Tiberius (A.D. 22) allowed its use to all whose fathers and grandfathers had property of the value of 400,000 sestertia (3,230_l._). The restriction, however, was of little avail, and the ambition for the _annulus aureus_ became greater than it had ever been before. Juvenal, in his eleventh ‘Satire,’ alludes to a spendthrift who, after consuming his estate, has nothing but his ring:-- At length, when nought remains a meal to bring, The last poor shift, off comes the Knightly ring, And sad Sir Pollio begs his daily fare, With undistinguished hands, and fingers bare. Martial attacks a person under the name of Zoilus, who had been raised from a state of servitude to Knighthood, and was determined to make the ring, the badge of his new honour, sufficiently conspicuous:-- Zoile, quid tota gemmam præcingere libra Te juvat, et miserum perdire sardonycha? Annulus iste tuus fuerat modo cruribus aptus; Non eadem digitis pondera conveniunt.