to the other women, by wearing an ornament of so much value that no one could pay for it."
The
word "margarita" was used symbolically to designate the most cherished
object; for instance, a favorite child. In an inscription published by
Fabretti, p. 44, No. 253, the word margaritio has the same significance. (Sex. Bruttidio juveni margaritioni carissimo, vixit annis II mensibus VII, diebus XVIII.)1
While
the ancient writers were familiar with the pearl itself, they knew
little of the fisheries, and related many curious stories which had
come to Athens and Rome. Pliny and AElianus quoted from Megasthe-nes
that the pearl-oysters lived in communities like swarms of bees, and
were governed by one remarkable for its size and great age, and which
was wonderfully expert in keeping its subjects out of danger, and that
the fishermen endeavored first to catch this one, so that the others
might easily be secured. Procopius, one of the most entertaining of
the old Byzantine chroniclers, wrote of social relations between the
pearl-oysters and the sharks, and of methods of inducing the growth of
pearls.
The
principal fisheries of antiquity were in the Persian Gulf, on the
coasts of Ceylon and India, and in the Red Sea. The pearls referred to
in ancient Chinese literature appear to have been taken from the rivers
and ponds of that country, while those in Cochin China and Japan seem
to have come from the adjoining seas. The pearls were distributed
among the nations in control of the fisheries, and from them, other
people received collections, either as presents, in conquest, or by way
of trade. History makes no mention of pearls having been obtained
elsewhere than in the Orient up to the time of Julius Caesar, when
small quantities of inexpensive ones were collected in Britain by the
invading Romans. And in the first century a.D., Pliny states that small reddish pearls were found about Italy and in the Bosphorus Straits near Constantinople.
A
number of specimens of pearls of the artistic Greeks and of the
luxurious Romans are yet in existence, and some of these are in a
fairly good state of preservation. A notable and interesting example is
a superb Greek necklace of pearls and gold, referred to the third
century b.c., and now
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Several earrings now in
that museum, in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, the British Museum,
the Louvre in Paris, and in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, are shown
in this book. Some of these may have decorated ears that listened to
the comedies of Aristophanes, the tragedies of Euripides, the
philosophies of Plato, or the oratory of Demosthenes. A number of
classic statues have the ears pierced
1 "Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines," Paris, 1904, Vol. III, pp. 1595-6.
