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Ring of Gyges

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The Ring of Gyges is a mythical magical artifact mentioned by the philosopher Plato in Book 2 of The Republic (2.359a - 2.360d). It granted its owner the power to become invisible at will.

The legend

According to the legend, the ancestor (in Book 10 Socrates refers to the ring as belonging to Gyges himself, not his ancestor as Glaucon states in Book 2) of Gyges of Lydia was a shepherd in the service of King Candaules of Lydia. After an earthquake, a cave was revealed in a mountainside where Gyges was feeding his flock. Entering the cave, Gyges discovered that it was in fact a tomb with a bronze horse containing a corpse, larger than that of a man, who wore a golden ring, which Gyges pocketed. Gyges then arranged to be chosen as one of the messengers who reported to the king as to the status of the flocks. Arriving at the palace, Gyges used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself. King Croesus, famous for his wealth, was Gyges' descendant.

The moral of the story

In The Republic, Plato puts the tale of the ring of Gyges in the mouth of Glaucon, who uses it to make the point that no man is so virtuous that he could resist the temptation of being able to steal at will by the ring's power of invisibility. In contemporary terms, Glaucon argues that morality is a social construction, whose source is the desire to maintain one's reputation for virtue and honesty; when that sanction is removed, moral character would evaporate. However, Glaucon does not actually hold this belief; he merely produces this tale so that Socrates' argument for justice can be made stronger:

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.
— Plato's Republic, book 2 (Benjamin Jowett trans.)

However, in the dialogue Socrates goes on to explain that justice would not be defined by just this social construct; the man who abused the power of the Ring of Gyges has become morally bankrupt and suffered irreparable failings of character, while a man that chose willingly not to use it is at least at peace with himself.[citation needed]

Later adaptations of the tale

Plato's story has been retold or adapted by several authors, both ancient and modern, the most notable in present time being Lord of the Rings.

Xanthos the Lydian

Although Xanthos the Lydian did not mention the ring, he told about a female slave who helped Gyges to usurp the Lydian throne. His version survived in the work of Nicolaus of Damascus.

Ptolemaios Chemmos

The works of Ptolemaios Chemmos unfortunately have not survived extant, but Photios and Tzetzes quoted his version of the Ring myth and the Suda, a Byzantine dictionary, refers to him.

During the reign of the emperors Hadrian and Trajan, he wrote a treatise on paradoxical or new histories. In his version of the story, the queen sees Gyges hidden behind the door of the bedroom because she was in possession of a ring that originated from a dragon or worm. She gives the ring to Gyges to murder the king.

Chrétien de Troyes

The character Lunette gives the title hero a ring of invisibility patterned after the Ring of Gyges in the story of Yvain, or, The Knight with the Lion by Chrétien de Troyes:

"Please take this little ring of mine, which you will return when I shall have delivered you." Then she handed him the little ring and told him that its effect was like that of the bark which covers the wood so that it cannot be seen; but it must be worn so that the stone is within the palm; then he who wears the ring upon his finger need have no concern for anything; for no one, however sharp his eyes may be, will be able to see him any more than the wood which is covered by the outside bark.

Unlike the Ring of Gyges, however, the ring of invisibility in Yvain does not corrupt the character of its user. Yvain uses the ring to secretly observe the widow of a knight whom he had recently slain, and whom he is later to marry, in Chrétien's tale. But these events take place within the conventions of courtly love and its themes of unrequited love and stylized adultery; as such, no disparagement of Yvain's character is meant by these actions in Chrétien's tale.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Ring of Gyges is one literary source of the One Ring that appears in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; like the ring of Gyges, the One Ring grants the power of invisibility, and corrupts the character of those who possess it.

Richard Wagner

There is also a connection between the Ring of Gyges and Richard Wagner's musical tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, although Wagner used the Norse sagas and the Nibelunglied as direct sources of inspiration. In the first of the four operas, Das Rheingold, the dwarf Alberich steals gold from the Rhinemaidens and renounces love in favor of power. This renunciation enables Alberich use the gold to forge a magical ring, which gives him the power to rule the world. He uses this ring to enslave his fellow Nibelung dwarves, including his brother Mime, the most skillful of blacksmiths. Alberich forces Mime to make a magic helmet, the Tarnhelm, which renders its wearer invisible (like the Ring of Gyges). In the last scene of Das Rheingold, the gods take the ring of power from Alberich, and he curses it, so that whoever bears the ring will be enslaved by its power (even as the Ring of Gyges corrupts its wearer into a slave of immorality).

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