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Updated: May 4, 2025
Whether this extraordinary story was true, or whether it was all fabricated after the fall of Polycrates, as a dramatic embellishment of his history, we can not now know.
Then Darius divided the Persian empire into twenty satrapies, whereof each one paid its own tribute, save Persia itself, and he was lord of all Asia, and Egypt also. In the days of Cambyses, Polycrates was despot of Samos, being the first who ever thought to make himself a ruler of the seas. And he had prospered marvellously.
So, having one of his fifty-oared vessels manned, he put to sea, and when he had gone a long distance from the coast he took the ring from his finger and, in the presence of all the sailors, tossed it into the waters. This was not done without deep grief to Polycrates.
This statue may represent one of the youthful favourites of the tyrant Polycrates hymning his master's love in Anacreontic strain. But it is far from likely that it is a statue of the philosopher Pythagoras.
In Egypt in particular, we are told that, though he brought a letter of recommendation from Polycrates, his native sovereign, to Amasis, king of that country, who fully concurred with the views of the writer, the priests, jealous of admitting a foreigner into their secrets, baffled him as long as they could, referring him from one college to another, and prescribing to him the most rigorous preparatives, not excluding the rite of circumcision.
These arguments, says Polycrates, I have urged in behalf of fishmongers, drawing them from testimony and custom. But, says Symmachus, I will go more seriously to work, and more like a logician. For if that may truly be said to be a relish which gives meat the best relish, it will evidently follow, that that is the best sort of relish which gets men the best stomach to their meat.
But I would have them whom the lightness or foolery of the argument may offend to consider that mine is not the first of this kind, but the same thing that has been often practiced even by great authors: when Homer, so many ages since, did the like with the battle of frogs and mice; Virgil, with the gnat and puddings; Ovid, with the nut; when Polycrates and his corrector Isocrates extolled tyranny; Glauco, injustice; Favorinus, deformity and the quartan ague; Synescius, baldness; Lucian, the fly and flattery; when Seneca made such sport with Claudius' canonizations; Plutarch, with his dialogue between Ulysses and Gryllus; Lucian and Apuleius, with the ass; and some other, I know not who, with the hog that made his last will and testament, of which also even St.
Democedes, the most celebrated physician of our day, whom you Samians will have known at the court of Polycrates, hastened to the spot, but no skill could now avail the happy Lysander, he was dead. "Milo was obliged to forego the victor's wreath"; and the fame of this youth will long continue to sound through the whole of Greece.
While the ants were busy in devouring the victims thus given up to them, the authors of all the mischief would make good their escape, and thus carry off their gold to a place of safety. These famous ants were bigger than foxes! The reconnoitering party. The physician Democedes. Story of Democedes. His boyhood. Democedes at Ægina. At Athens. At the court of Polycrates. Democedes a captive.
There is a secret apprehension in man counselling sobriety and moderation, a fear born of expediency distinct from conscience, which is ethical; though it seems to be closely connected with conscience acting, as it does, by warnings and prohibitions. The story of Polycrates and his ring is a symbol of the instinctive feeling that extraordinary good fortune is perilous and can not endure.
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