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Remarkable Rings (Once mounted on a ring)

once, mounted on a ring, decorated the hand of the parricide Nero, who used it to sign his sanguinary mandates. Numbers of copies have been taken of this gem in ancient and modern times. It is thus described by Tenhove :

Apollo, in a noble attitude, is holding his lyre, and regarding with disdain Marsyas, who, bound to a tree, and his hands tied behind him, awaits the just punishment of his temerity. The young Scythian who is to execute the sentence, kneels before Apollo, apparently imploring his clemency. The quiver and arrows of the god are suspended from one of the branches of the tree; on the foreground are the instruments of which the satyr has made such unfortunate use. It is known that Nero had the folly to imagine himself the first musician of his time, and in selecting this subject he doubtless intended to get rid of all competition, by deterring those who might otherwise have felt disposed to enter the lists with him. Perhaps he was looking at his left hand, and assuming Apollo for his model, when he had the singer Menedemus, of whom he was jealous, flayed, as it were, with whipping, in his presence, whose yells of agony seemed to the emperor so melodious that he warmly applauded. Lorenzo's feeling with regard to the gem was, doubtless, of a very different character: he selected the stone on account of its marvellous beauty of execution. Among the art treasures, in connection with rings and camei in the British Museum, the Rev. C. W. King notices a cameo with a lion passant, in low relief in the red layer of a sardonyx, exquisitely finished, which has its value greatly enhanced by the 'LAVR. MED.' cut in the field, attesting that it once belonged to the original cabinet of Lorenzo de' Medici. This stone, set in a ring, has its face protected by a glass; a proof of the estimation in which its former possessor held it.