Certainly the traditions of Homeric times, recorded by later Greek writers, tell of several rings worn by Homeric personages. A ring of Ulysses, engraved with a dolphin by order of the wily hero, in memory of the rescue of his son Telemachus by one of the creatures of the deep, is mentioned by Plutarch (“De solertia anim.”). Moreover, Helen of Troy is stated to have worn on one of her fingers a ring bearing the figure of an “enormous fish,” and, finally, the great Greek painter Polygnotus, a contemporary of Pericles (495–429 B.C.), in a painting showing the descent of Ulysses into Hades, represented the youthful Phocus as wearing a ring, set with an engraved gem, on one of the fingers of his left hand.[15] This painting was highly reputed in ancient times, and had been dedicated to Apollo in the shrine at Delphi by the Cnidians. The significance of the ring in the fourth century before Christ, as an ensign of office in Athens, is brought out by a passage in the “Knights” of the comic poet Aristophanes, where the people, as an expression of their discontent with the administration of Kleon, demand that he surrender the ring with which he has been invested, as a proof that he is no longer entrusted with the office of treasurer.[16] A clever use of a ring is reported to have been made by Ismenias of Thebes, when he was sent by the Bœotians as an envoy to the Persian King. Before he was brought into the royal presence he was instructed by the master of ceremonies that he must prostrate himself before the sovereign. This act was strongly repugnant to his Greek consciousness, both as a debasement of his individual dignity, and as an act of divine homage offered to a mortal. To escape from the dilemma, the envoy, as he approached the throne, took off his ring and succeeded in dropping it without attracting too much attention; whereupon he stooped and picked it up. The Greek onlookers understood the meaning of his action, while the Persians believed that he had satisfactorily conformed to the court ceremonial. His little ruse was rewarded by a favorable reception of his requests by the Persian King, who had long been offended by the obstinate refusal of the Greeks to render him the homage he regarded as his due.[17] The iron ring of the Romans, accounted for in popular fancy by the tale of the rock and link ring of Prometheus, probably came to the Romans from the Etruscans, who appear to have owed the fashion to the Greeks, and Pliny notes in his “Naturalis Historia,” written about 75 A.D., that even then the Lacedæmonians, with true Spartan sobriety, still wore iron rings.[18] Roman tradition carried back the introduction of such rings to the age of Numa Pompilius, about 700 B.C., and there is evidence that, at a later time at least, they were regarded as symbols of victory when worn on the hand of a successful general, a late instance being the wearing of an iron ring by Marius at his triumph for the victory over Jugurtha in 107 B.C.[19]