The ring reads “ANIMA DVLCIS VIVAS MECV” - “May you live with me sweet soul”
Very cool
“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
A few tidbits:
Spelling “mecu” for “mecum” (with me) might sound weird, but by the fourth century odds are Latin nasal vowels already fell into disuse. It was probably pronounced [me:kũ:] in Classical times, [meku] by the time this ring was forged. Romance languages consistently ditched that nasal; see e.g. Italian “meco” or Spanish “conmigo” (lit. “with me-with”).
Interesting usage of the subjunctive (uiuas) instead of the imperative (uiua). Both would be grammatically correct here, and convey roughly the same thing, but I guess the imperative would sound a bit too pushy; more like an order than like a hope or desire.
Cheesy lines comparing your loved one with sweets are really, really old. Plautus’ Bacchides (from 190 BCE) already show:
cor meum, spes mea, / mel meum, suavitudo, cibus, gaudium. / sine te amem.
My heart, my hope, / my honey, delight, sustenance, joy. / allow (me) to love you.And this text is like, half a millennium older than the ring! (Those cheesy lines are still alive and kicking in Romance-speaking cultures, by the way. I cringe a bit when I see a couple calling each other “docinho” [little sweet], but it isn’t like I didn’t do the same in my late teens / early adulthood.)