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Margarita, Pearl

Margarita, Pearl Page of 453 Molochites, Malachite Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
234
MARGARITA.
The fellow to it was about to share its fate, when L. Plancus, who had been appointed umpire in the matter, seized it, declar­ing that Antony had lost. This pearl, on the conquest of Egypt, was sawn in two to make pendants for the ears of the Venus in the Pantheon : the goddess, remarks Pliny, being well satisfied with half of their dinner.
As regards this story, no acid that the human stomach could endure is capable of entirely dissolving a pearl even after long maceration in it. Barbot on trying the experiment found the outer layer was reduced to a jelly, whilst that beneath was not at all affected. No doubt the wily queen swallowed the pearl whole in some more agreeable potation than vinegar, secure of its ultimate recovery undamaged, and invented the fiction of its complete and instantaneous dissolution, which, be it observed, rested entirely on her own testimony, in order to gain her wager.
The same experiment is recorded to have been tried somewhat before by Clodius, son of iEsopus the player, who, having dis­covered that dissolved pearls possessed the most exquisite flavour, did not selfishly confine his knowledge to himself, but gave one a-piece to each of his guests to swallow. Powdered Pearls were formerly considered as an invaluable medicine in stomach complaints : the benefit they produced must have de­pended entirely on the imagination of the patient, the substance being a mere antacid, no more efficacious than the powder of the shell.
Margarita, Pearl Page of 453 Molochites, Malachite
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