In
excavations made last spring (1907), in the Hauran district in Syria,
Azeez Khayat found a number of loose pearls which had formed a
necklace. The tomb in which they were discovered was cut in the rock,
and appeared to be of Roman origin. The pearls were still attached to
the old bronze wire with which they had been strung. Mr. Khayat also
mentions the finding of a pearl pin, and a single earring bearing a
pearl, in a rock-tomb at Caesarea, in Syria. Rock-cut tombs from ten to
twelve feet in depth are frequently discovered, and they probably date
from the beginning of the Christian era.
The
habit was so common of using pearls as a base to throw up the
brilliance of other gems, that we may, perhaps, believe even in
Caligula's slippers of pearls, with rubies and emeralds set upon them
like flowers.
The
Roman ladies had a special favor for pearls as earrings, and it was one
of their consuming ambitions to possess exceptionally fine specimens
for this purpose. They preferred pear-shaped pearls, and often wore two
or three of them strung together. They jingled gently as they moved
about—a fitting accompaniment, it may be said, to their graceful
movements—and from this jingling the name crotalia, or "rattles," was applied to them.
The
description given by Pliny of the pearl ornaments of Lollia Paulina is
the principal claim which the wife of Caligula has on our interest.
I
myselfe have seen Lollia Paulina when she was dressed ... so beset and
bedeckt all over with hemeraulds and pearles, disposed inrewes, ranks,
and courses one by another ; round about the attire of her head, her
cawle, her borders, her perruke of hair, her bongrace and chaplet ; at
her ears pendant, about her neck in a carcanet, upon her wrest in
bracelets, & on her fingers in rings ; that she glittered and shone
againe like the sun as she went. The value of these ornaments she
esteemed and rated at forty million Sestertij1 and offered
openly to prove it out of hand by her bookes of accounts and
reckonings. Yet were not these jewels the gifts and presents of the
prodigall prince her husband, but the goods and ornaments from her owne
house, fallen to her by way of inheritance from her grandfather, which
he had gotten together even by the robbing and spoiling of whole
provinces. See what the issue and end was of those extortions and
outrageous exactions of his : this was it. That M. Lollius, slandered
and defamed for receiving bribes and presents of the kings in the East
; and being out of favor with C. Cœsar, sonne of Augustus, and having
lost his amitié, dranke a cup of poison, and prevented his judiciall
triall : that forsooth his neece Lollia, all to be hanged with jewels
of 400 hundred thousand Sestertij, should be seene glittering, and
looked at of every man by candle-light all a supper time.2
1 Equivalent to about 1,250,000 ounces of '"Naturall Historie," London, 1601, Lib.
silver ; Hardouin says 7,600,000 francs. IX, c. 35.
