On the ring of Julius Cæsar was a representation of an armed Venus, as he claimed to be a descendant of the goddess. This device was adopted by his partisans; on that of Augustus, first a sphinx; afterwards the image of Alexander the Great, and at last, his own portrait, which succeeding emperors continued to use.[8] Among the ancients the figures engraved on rings were not hereditary, and each assumed that which pleased him. Numa had made a law prohibiting representations of the gods, but custom abrogated the ordinance, and the Romans had engraved in their rings not only figures of their own deities, but those of other countries, especially of the Egyptians. The physician Asclepiades had a ring with Urania represented upon it. Scipio the African had a sphinx; Cornelius Scipio Africanus, younger son of the great Africanus, wore the portrait of his father, but as his conduct was unworthy of the character of his illustrious sire the people expressed their disgust by depriving him of the ring. Sylla had a Jugurtha; the Epicureans, a head of Epicurus; Commodus, an Amazon, the portrait of his mistress Martia; Aristomenes, an Agathocles, King of Sicily; Callicrates, a Ulysses; the Greeks, Helen; the Trojans, Pergamus; the inhabitants of Heraclia, a Hercules; the Athenians, Solon; the Lacedæmonians, Lycurgus; the Alexandrians, an Alexander; the Seleucians, Seleucus; Mæcenas, a frog; Pompey, a dog on the prow of a ship; the Kings of Sparta, an eagle holding a serpent in its claws; Darius, the son of Hystaspes, a horse; the infamous Sperus, the rape of Proserpine; the Locrians, Hesperus, or the evening star; Polycrates, a lyre; Seleucus, an anchor. The Rev. C. W. King, in ‘Antique Gems,’ informs us that ‘the earliest mention of a ring-stone in relief occurs in Seneca, who, in a curious anecdote which he tells (“De Beneficiis,” iii. 26) concerning the informer Maro and a certain Paulus, speaks of the latter as having had on his finger on that occasion a portrait of Tiberius in relief upon a projecting gem, “Tiberii Cæsaris imaginem ectypam atque eminente gemma.” This periphrasis would seem to prove that such a representation was not very common at the time, or else a technical term would have been used to express that particular kind of gem-engraving.’ Among the discoveries made during some excavations at Canterbury in 1868 was a Roman ring of exceedingly pure gold, the stone being a very fine and highly-polished onyx, engraved with a Ganymede. At a meeting of the Archæological Institute at Norwich in 1847 a fine gold Roman ring found at Caistor was exhibited, set with an intaglio on onyx, the subject being the Genius of Victory. The following illustrations of engraved Roman rings are taken from Montfaucon’s ‘L’Antiquité Expliquée’:-- [Illustration: Gold ring, with head of Trajan, radiated.] [Illustration: Silver ring, with head of the Empress Crispina.] [Illustration: Head of the Emperor Gordian III.]