The progressive changes in the Roman regulations and customs governing the wearing of rings and the material of which they should be made have been stated in a concise and convenient form by M. Deloche, and his conclusions are of considerable value, based as they are upon a very careful study of the classic sources and their best interpreters in the past.[20] The iron ring, the only one originally, was at first regarded as a mark of individual honor, awarded by the sovereign or in his name. From the earliest times of the Roman Republic, a senator sent on an embassy received a gold ring, all other senators being restricted to iron ones. Soon, however, senators of noble birth, and, later on, all senators without distinction, enjoyed the right of wearing gold rings. In the third century B.C. this privilege was then extended to the knights, and in the last years of the Republic, as well as under the emperors, many other classes of citizens were made partakers of the privilege, so that before long even some freedmen and certain of those pursuing the least reputable vocations were permitted the enjoyment of a distinction once so jealously guarded. Toward the latter part of the third century A.D. all Roman soldiers could lawfully wear gold rings, although in the late Republican and earlier Imperial periods this right was accorded only to the military tribunes. Thus, finally, all class distinctions in this respect were done away with. Every freeborn man could wear a gold ring, freedmen, with a few exceptions, were confined to silver rings, and the iron ring became the badge of slavery. After the battle of Cannæ (August 2, 216 B.C.), in which the Romans were totally defeated by Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader ordered that the gold rings should be taken from the hands of the dead Romans and heaped up in the vestibule of his quarters. Enough were collected to fill a bushel basket (some authorities say three bushel baskets), and they were sent to Carthage, not as valuable spoils of war, but as proof of the great slaughter among the Roman patricians and knights, for at this time none beneath the rank of knights, and only those of highest standing among them, those provided with steeds by the State (_equo publico_), had been given the right to wear gold rings.[21] On days of national mourning the gold rings were laid aside as a mark of sorrow and respect, and iron rings were substituted. This was the case after the defeat at Cannæ in 216 B.C. and on the funeral day of Augustus Cæsar in 15 A.D. This usage is noted in one of the poet Juvenal’s satires.[22] Occasionally, as a mark of disapprobation, senators would remove their gold rings at a public sitting, as, for instance, when, in 305 B.C., the appointment as edile of Cneius Flavius, son of the freedman Annius, was announced in the Senate.