1) A stranger than fiction Roman ring mystery thread: this enigmatic Roman gold ring was found in a ploughed field near Silchester in 1785. The square bezel has a portrait of the pagan goddess Venus, inscribed backwards SUNEV for use as a signet ring by the owner. Curiously...

2) ...around the ten-sided ring is crudely inscribed the identity of a later Christian owner, "Senicianus" who it proclaims with spelling errors "lives in god" (vivas in deo). A ring passing from pagan to Christian hands - certainly possible in the 4th century - but remarkably...

3)... at a temple to the mysterious British god “Nodens” 80 miles away in Lydney, Gloucestershire, a lead curse tablet (defixio) was later discovered. On the tablet a man named “Silvianus” complains that his gold ring was stolen and he suspects “Senicianus” was the culprit! ...

4) Senicianus deposited the curse tablet and donated at the temple half the value of his lost ring, in the hope that the gods would "permit no good health to Senicianus." In 1929 the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler would make a connection between this curse and the gold ring...

5) Wheeler consulted a certain young J.R.R. Tolkien, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, to work on the etymology of the curious deity Nodens and explore the possible connections with the enigmatic Roman gold ring...

6) Soon afterwards Tolkien would begin creating his legendarium of Middle-earth with both “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” revolving around the magical, golden and often-stolen One Ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Had Tolkien been inspired by the Silvianus ring?