valued
at a sum equivalent to £400,000. " Yet were not these jewels the gifts
and presents of the prodigali prince her husband, but the goods and
ornaments from her owne house, fallen unto her by way of inheritance
from her grandfather, which hee 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. Caesar, sonne of
Augustus, and having lost his amitié, drank a cup of poyson, and
prevented his judicial trial ; that forsooth his niece Lollia, all to
be hanged with jewels of 400 hundred thousand sestertij, should bee
scene glittering and looked at of every man, by candlelight, all a
supper time." So runs Holland's Translation of Pliny.
The Pliny Pearl, c. A.D.
50. The largest Pearl known to Pliny, the elder, who was born A.D. 23,
and lost his life during the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius, when
Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed, A.D. 79, weighed half a Roman
ounce, equal to 302 grains of our present weight. It was probably a
baroque.
The Sassanian Pearl, c. A.D. 500. It has been mentioned in an early chapter
