And
the taste of the Roman ladies for pearls has perpetuated itself in
Italy, though other of the luxurious habits which in their case
accompanied it, have long since died out. The women of Florence even
now are not content if they do not possess a necklet of pearls, and
this generally forms the marriage portion of the middle-class women. It
is thought, just as it was in ancient Rome, that this gives an air of
respectability, and forms a sure protection from insult in the street
or elsewhere.
One
of the earliest illustrations showing a pearl earring is the one in the
ear of Julia, the daughter of Titus, incised on a splendid aquamarine
in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This gem was formerly in the Treasury of
St. Denis, and is considered to belong to the· Carlovingian period.1
So large and heavy were the earrings worn in Rome that there were women known as auriculce ornatrices, special
doctresses whose sole occupation was the healing of ear tumors and of
injured or infected ears. In a similar way, at. the present day, we
have the ear piercer, whose vocation, however, is rapidly becoming
useless because of the ingenious modern devices for holding the pearls
to unpierced ears; and we must consider this eminently desirable when
we think of the ear-piercing outfits of the former jeweler, who never
disinfected his apparatus, and when we recall the fact that it was
always expected that the ear would swell, first, from the crude awl
that was used, and, secondly, from the unsterilized instruments.
That
the Romans believed in decorating the statues of their goddesses with
pearls and dedicating them as offerings, is evidenced by the gift of
Cleopatra's pearl, which was cut in halves to make earrings for the
Venus of the Pantheon; and by the buckler of British pearls for the
statue of Venus Genetrix, given by Julius Csesar. Quite a number of
statues and busts of the Roman period, and some of an earlier time,
have the ears pierced for the reception of earrings, and it is highly
probable that pearls were used for this decoration. Among these are the
busts of Pallas and Juno Lanuvina in the Vatican ; that of Eirene, a
marble copy of a work of Cephisdotus, in the Glyptothek, Munich, and
the Venus de Medici in the Uffizi, Florence.
Pottier2
mentions several other Greek statues which show that earrings were
used for their adornment ; as, for example, the winged Victory of
Archernos, in Delos ; the head of one of the caryatids found at Delphi,
a cast of which is in the Louvre ; the archaic Aphrodite of the Villa
Ludovisi; the Athena from the frieze of the temple at yEgina;
'MS. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 2089, Romaines," ed. by Deremberg and Saglio: XLVII, No. 12.
Art. "Inaures" by Pottier, Paris, 1899, Vol.
* "Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et III, pp. 440-447.
