tainly
due to this circumstance that we find much greater evidences of the use
of pearls in the western countries after his time. Besides this, the
founding of Alexandria provided a mart, in whose bazaars the traders of
India, Persia, and Arabia bartered their treasured gems, just as their
descendants do in the same place at the present day.
It
was not, however, until the establishment of the Roman empire that this
commercial intercourse reached its highest development. The Romans,
with their marvelous capacity for organization, were the first to build
a great system of permanent and well-kept roads to facilitate land
travel and land traffic. These great roads, starting from the Forum,
reached out in every direction, even to the limits of the empire; and,
as a result of increased commercial activity, more gems were engraved,
mounted, and set during the five hundred years of Rome's commercial
supremacy than during any other early epoch of the world's history.
In Rome, the trade in pearls was so important that there was a corporation of "margaritarii." The officince margaritariorum were installed in the Forum, in the neighborhood of the tabernae argentariœ; some were also on the Via Sacra.1 However, the name margaritarius did
not only apply to the jewelers, merchants, and setters of pearls, but
also to those who fished for them and to the guardians of the gems and
jewels wherein pearls were used.
With
the fall of the Western empire, the Dark Ages settled down like a cloud
over Europe for five hundred years. Only among the Saracens and at
Byzantium did the culture of the old civilization survive, and
eventually the light of knowledge and of progress was rekindled from
these sources. The Crusades were the chief factors in this new
development; they gave a mighty stimulus, by means of which Europe was
aroused from her lethargy and once more brought into contact with the
Orient. Venice and Genoa now became the great carriers, and from this
time, and to this source, may be traced many of the oriental gems in
Europe. The Venetian fleet of three hundred merchant ships brought the
products of the East and distributed them over Europe, by way of the
German cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg, where the great jewelers and
silversmiths made world-famed ornaments.
When
Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, the treasures of the
Eastern empire were scattered throughout Europe; but, at the same time,
the establishment of the Turkish empire served to close the way to
India and the far East for the merchants and travelers of Europe, and,
hence, new means of access had to be sought by sea.
1 See the epitaph of Tutichylus "qui fuit margaritarius," Orelli, 4076.
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