MYSTICAL AND MEDICINAL PROPERTIES 315
made Antonie a supper which was sumptuous and roiall ynough: howbeit, there was no extraordinarie service seene upon the board: whereat Antonius laughed
her to scorne, and by way of mockerie required to see a bill with the
account of the particulars. She again said, that whatsoever had been
served up alreadie was but the overplus above the rate and proportion
in question, affirming still that she would yet in that supper make up
the full summe that she was seazed at : yea, herselfe alone would eat
above that reckoning, and her owne supper should cost 60 million
Sestertij : and with that commanded the second service to be brought
in. The servitors set before her one only crewet of sharpe vineger, the
strength whereof is able to resolve pearles. Now she had at her eares
hanging these two most precious pearles, the singular and only jewels
of the world, and even Natures wonder. As Antonie looked wistly
upon her, shee tooke one of them from her eare, steeped it in the
vineger, and so soon as it was liquified, dranke it off. And as she was
about to doe the like by the other, L. Plancius the judge of that wager, laid fast hold upon it with his hand, and pronounced withal, that Antonie had lost the wager.1
Elsewhere has been set forth the impracticability of dissolving a pearl in a glass of vinegar without first pulverizing it.2
It seems probable that if Pliny's interesting story has any foundation,
Cleopatra might have swallowed a solid pearl in a glass of
wine—certainly a more pleasing draught as well as a more graphic
sacrifice; and we should accept its reported value with a grain of
salt, for it would scarcely have been safe for the court gossip to
belittle the value of this tribute of love.
Pliny,
and other Roman writers, mention another instance, that of Clodius "the
sonne of Aesope the Tragedian Poet," who took two pearls of great price
"in a braverie, and to know what tast pearles had, mortified them in
venegre, and drunke them up. And finding them to content his palat
wondrous well, because he would not have all the pleasure by himselfe,
and know the goodnesse thereof alone, he gave to every guest at his
table one pearle apeece to drinke in like manner."3 The
chronicler fails to tell what the guests thought of the flavor of
pearls, or whether some would not have preferred them for a more
appropriate use.
