The other is a gold ring of solid fabric, having for device the figure of a female with a bare head; one arm is enveloped in the folds of her dress, while the other hand is pouring incense on a slender altar. A zigzag garland surrounds the verge of the field. The locality would suggest that it may represent Penelope sacrificing to some tutelar deity, and invoking it to conduct Ulysses home in safety--a conceit which might hold good, even were the work decided to be Roman. There are some remarkably fine specimens of rings in the Royal Danish Museum, which have been discovered in Scandinavian graves, and some of which are represented in the chapter on ‘Rings from the Earliest Period’ (p. 68). On the opening of some barrows on the wolds of Yorkshire in 1815, 1816, and 1817, among other disinterments was the skeleton of a female, and some of her ornaments; amongst others, a ring of red amber, in exterior diameter 1⅝ in., in interior diameter half an inch. Also a small ring scarcely one inch in diameter, and a ring of very nearly standard gold, weighing 3 dwts. 21 grs. In front this ring is clasped in a kind of rose, or quatrefoil, and it is an ornament by no means of despicable workmanship. The era of this interment is supposed to be prior to a general extension of Christianity in Britain. Stukeley (Abury, p. 45) records the finding of a flat gold ring in a barrow at Yatesbury. Douglas, in his discoveries of a later date (‘Nenia Brit.’ p. 117), says ‘rings to the finger seldom occur of any ponderous metal, like the Roman ones of gold, silver, and bronze.’ In the museum at Mayence (the Roman Maguntiacum, or Mogontiacum), so exceedingly rich in antiquarian remains, there are some fine specimens of finger-rings found in Franconian graves. The following illustration represents a gold ring, set with a coin, which is probably the copy of a Roman one:-- [Illustration: Mortuary ring at Mayence.] In the second cut the inscription of the reverse, excepting a few letters, is erased in the process of fastening the ring to it, by the melting of the metal. [Illustration: Mortuary ring at Mayence.] A metal ring with inscription translated ‘In Dei nomine, Amen.’ A gold finger-ring with a figure in the centre of the shield; the ornaments of dragons on the outer panels are inlaid with dark blue enamel:-- [Illustration: Mortuary ring at Mayence.] In ancient times rings were burnt with the corpse. When Cynthia’s shade appears to Propertius, he remarks: ‘Et solitam digito adederat ignis;’ ‘a fact (remarks the Rev. C. W. King) which fully accounts for the number of fine intagli partly or wholly calcined which every collector meets with not unfrequently, and often with the greatest regret at the destruction of some matchless specimen of the skill of the engraver.’