Friday, November 5, 2010

A Roman Ring


A Roman ring from Marion on Cyprus, ca 350 AD.

"The worst crime against mankind was committed by him who was the first to put a ring upon his fingers: and yet we are not informed, by tradition, who it was that first did so. For as to all the stories told about Prometheus, I look upon them as utterly fabulous [...] It was the hand, and a sinister hand, too, in every sense, that first brought gold into such high repute: not a Roman hand, however, for upon that it was the practice to wear a ring of iron only, and solely as an indication of warlike prowess."

Pliny the Elder - Naturalis Historia (the Natural History) XXXIII.4
Translated by J. Bostock and H.T. Riley

2 comments:

Noor al Haqiqa said...

I have been traveling through your pages and loving your photography of ancient times. Your quality is high especially for the local art and sculptures. The one of the four dogs (I forget where) made me smile. As a "dog person" I appreciated the quotes and the absolute timelessness of our canine companions. The sculptures captured the essence of dog perfectly.

Yes, I like that you do not focus on the mundane can be seen anywhere material. Keeping you in my list of Art sites for revisiting.

Patrik Klingborg said...

Thank you very much, I'm happy that you like the blog! I'll see if we can find some other dogs to comment on in the future.