Did Tolkien ever say if the Ring of Power was inspired by the Ring of Gyges, or is that just what everyone kinda assumed?

The Ring of Gyges is a hypothetical in the Socratic dialogues, that revolves around a magic ring that can make the wearer invisible. It's meant to explore what presumably just men would do with the power to be free from consequence or detection of unjust acts, and whether they'd be inherently corrupted by such a power.

The parable is based on an early myth of the Mermnad dynasty of the Lydian kings.

I've been rereading the Republic, and it's worse than I remember, chalk full of eugenics and state power able to dictate and direct human behavior and nature through the application of "experts", with unity being a virtue and individually a vice. Like... Human cattle as cogs in a machine that's more efficient kinda thing, with this warped view that justice is something akin to the Borg. Everyone set to a specific task in service to the state... Like he believes in specialisation of knowledge but not social mobility or even innovation, where good is only good of the whole and set from on high rather than bottom up. In his utopia, many children are to be raised by the state, without individual family, no parents or children outside the collective rearing.

Teenage me really liked this book, and I wanna smack him upside the head. It's a good instruction on, you know... How to think things through and there's interesting meditations on the proper role of the state, but its' conclusions are antihuman. Plato's depiction of the politics of Socrates is progressive and illiberal.

It's not even exactly a meritocracy. It's like he wants to... breed humans for a task. Like, from birth one is to be made for a specific goal not set by the individual. Like... "you're going to be a guardian. You're going to be a baker. You're going to be a merchant." etc. and then applying what makes the best of those. He specifically advocates culling out those not suited towards their tasks or deficient in some way and ending the life of those who are deemed unfit from an early age.

It definitely delves into what today we'd call genes and race too. Like... Hellenistic peoples are to be treated differently than barbarians and lessers and all that.