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MARGARITA.
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233
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Pliny
mentions (58) that he had seen Lollia Paulina, the widow of Caligula,
covered head, neck, ears, and fingers with strings of pearls and
emeralds placed alternately to the value of 400,000Z. of our money
(quadringenties HS.) : plunder collected by her grandfather Lollius
from all the princes of the East. As, he remarks, she thus appeared
upon no very grand occasion, but merely at a private dinner-party, we
are to conclude that this display exhibited but a small portion of her
jewelry.
The
largest pearl known to the Romans weighed half an ounce and one scruple
over (260 grs. troy). This magnitude has seldom been equalled in modern
times. Barbot (' Pierres Précieuses,' 470) quotes one belonging to the
treasury of the Crown of Prance in 1791, weighing 108 grs., valued at
8000Z. De Boot speaks of one belonging to Eudolf II. weighing 180 grs.
Philip II. possessed one as large as a pigeon's egg, of 134 grs., and
worth 50,000 ducats. This came from the Panama2 fishery, and
was entitled La Peregrina ; it was pear-shaped, the form in which the
greatest bulk seems to be attained by this species. But the largest on
record is that, also pear-shaped, brought from India in 1620 by
Gougibus de Calais, and sold to Philip IV., of the weight of 480 grs.
The merchant, when asked by the king how he could venture to risk all
his fortune in one little article, replied, because he knew there was a
king of Spain to buy it of him. This, says Barbot, now belongs to the
Eussian Princess Yousoppoff.
Everybody
knows the story told by Pliny of Cleopatra, who, to outdo Antony's
extravagance, wagered with him that she would spend a sum equivalent to
1,000,000 l (millies HS.) upon one dinner. When her lover
ridiculed the banquet as in nothing coming up to her promise, she
replied that it was merely an adjunct to the grand dish ; and wearing
in her ears the two finest pearls then known of the value above
mentioned, she threw one of them into a vessel of the strongest vinegar
set before her, and as it dissolved immediately she drank it up.
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