Precious Stones facts and fancies Kunz: Magic of Jewels Page 470



	406 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS one pretext or another. Finally, as Antiochus refused to take the more than broad hints that the precious objects should be bestowed as gifts, Verres spread the rumor that a piratical fleet was on its way from Syria to attack Sicily, and forced Antiochus to leave the island that very day, retaining the borrowed vessels in spite of all remonstrances.⁵⁴ That precious stones should be used to decorate the teeth seems a rather queer development of art, although the practice is not altogether unknown at the present day, when we hear now and again of diamonds being set in teeth to satisfy the vanity of some eccentric individual. In pre-Colombian times, however, there is abundant evidence that this strange form of personal adornment was by no means rare, several examples having been unearthed from burials in Ecuador, and evidenceof the usage being offered by remains f romMex-ico and also from Central America. Among the Mayans here jadeite seems to have been the stone principally favored for this purpose, while in Mexico hematite has been met with in Oaxaca, turquoise in Vera Cruz, and at other places in the land, rock-crystal and obsidian.⁵⁵ For the insertion of the stones, the primitive dental artists carefully and skilfully cut or rubbed away the enamel from a section of the front part of the tooth to be decorated, and then applied the precious stone, cut to the required shape, as an inlay. The way in which this was done gives evidence of a remarkably high degree of skill in this line of work ; in many cases an inlay of gold was used, instead of a precious stone, and it has even been conjectured that some of these gold inlays represent a kind of gold filling for the protection of the tooth. While this is open to question, the undoubted fact that new teeth were occasionally inserted to take the place of those which ■* M. Tullii Ciceronis, " In Verrem," lib. iv, Oratio nona, cap. 27. "Marshall H. Saville in the American Anthropologist, vol. xv, Ko. 3, July-September, 1913.