270 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
latter
" Margaritum." The Persians make twelve classes of the Pearl according
to its shape, as round, egg-shaped, lenticular, grape-shaped,
cradle-like, &c. ; and as many according to the colour. The generic
name is "Mer-warid ; " when bored it takes the name of " Lulu."
It
was the Asiatic conquests of Pompey, says Pliny (xxxvii. 6), that first
turned the taste of the Romans towards Pearls and precious stones. In
his triumphal procession were carried thirty-three crowns made out of
Pearls, a temple of the Muses supporting a sun-dial, and a portrait
(bust) of the victor himself formed out of the same precious units.
This last piece of extravagance excites beyond all reasonable measure
the wrath of the old philosopher, who devotes several lines, chary as
he generally is of space, to the objurgation of such luxury, and
interprets the ostentatious exhibition of Pompey's head on this
occasion into a presage of the Divine anger, foreshowing that soon
afterwards the same head severed from the body should be held up for a
public spectacle. In such a precedent, adds be, Caligula must find an
excuse for his wearing slippers made out of Pearls, or even Nero, who
had wrought out of them sceptres for the actors in his theatre, and
couches for his amours.
From
this it appears that from their first introduction into Roman
fashionable life Pearls had been used as materials for art. Not that
they engraved in relief or intaglio upon so small and precious a body
; the compositions above described must have been made up out of Pearls
strung upon fine silver-wire or white horse-hair and thus fastened, in
a kind of mosaic, upon a model of the shape required, just as the "
Lamb " of the Golden Fleece, or our ornaments in seed-pearl are at
present constructed.
Pliny mentions (58) having seen Lollia Paulina, widow of Caligula, completely covered over with strings of alter-
