Italy. 37
history
has preserved the tradition that the quest of Pearls was one of the
inducements that tempted "the Romans to invade Britain. Tacitus
however, who enumerates Pearls among the products of our island,
describes them as being small and of inferior colour.
After this period the passion for Pearls became quite a furore in
Rome. The philosopher Seneca, sharply rebuked the Roman women for
wearing so many Pearls. He declared they would not bend nor yield
obedience to their husbands until double or treble the value of their
own settlements was dangling from their ears. Roman ladies wore
necklaces of Pearls or sometimes one row of Pearls and two longer rows
of either blue or green stones, having occasional Pearls of particular
beauty mixed with them. A necklace of a single row of gems was called a
monile, of two rows a dilium, of three à trelium. Clusters of Pearls worn as ear-drops were known as Crotalia, or rattles, because they tinkled together with the movement of the head.
Pliny, who wrote his famous Historia Naturalis in
the first century of the Christian era, gives a graphic description of
the Pearls and other ornaments of a Roman empress at a private party..
The passage is translated by Holland in these quaint terms : —" I
myselfe have seene Lollia Paulina (late wife and after widdow to Caius
Caligula the Emperor), when shee was dressed and set out, not in
