Note 887 — Chapter XXIX · THE RING OF POLYCRATES
Reading edition
Some recent scholars have suggested that in the stories of Polycrates throwing his ring into the sea, and of Theseus proving his parentage by a like sacrifice, we should detect traces of an early custom, by which the maritime king married the sea-goddess—a custom perpetuated in the symbolical union between the Doges of Venice and the Adriatic. This ingenious hypothesis was first worked out by S. Reinach, “Le Mariage avec la mer,” in Revue archéologique (1905), ii. 1 ff. (= id. Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Paris, (1906), ii. 266 ff.).