Der Ring des Polykrates (poem)

Polycrates' Ring (German: Der Ring des Polykrates) is a lyrical ballad written in June 1797 by Friedrich Schiller and first published in his 1798 Musen-Almanach annual. It is about how the greatest success gives reason to fear disaster. Schiller relied on the accounts of the fate of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, in Herodotus' Histories, Book III.

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The ballad is set at the court of Polycrates, where he is visited by Pharaoh Amasis II. Polycrates boasts of his victories while Amasis reminds him of the instability of fortune and prosperity, fearing the divine punishment carried by hubris. All the pharaoh's premonitions soon prove to be erroneous, which only leads him to assume the worst. He advises Polycrates to throw away whatever he valued most in order to escape a reversal of fortune. Polycrates, pondering, follows the advice and throws his most valuable ring into the sea. The next day, a fisherman offers him a large fish and Polycrates' cook discovers the ring inside of it. Amasis, horrified, breaks off their friendship and leaves him right away.

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A comic parody of the ballad by the Austrian playwright Heinrich Teweles (1856–1927) became the libretto of the Korngold opera Der Ring des Polykrates, written in 1913/14.

The Fish and the Ring

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

This article does not cite any sources. (April 2019)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (September 2010) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,138 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Der Ring des Polykrates]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Der Ring des Polykrates}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

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A comic parody of the ballad by the Austrian playwright Heinrich Teweles (1856–1927) became the libretto of the Korngold opera Der Ring des Polykrates, written in 1913/14.

The Fish and the Ring

Der Ring des Polykrates (poem)

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Der Ring des Polykrates (poem)

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Synopsis

Musical setting

See also