EARLY TRADE IN BLACK AND RED CORAL 233 



Whether by land their weary way they keep, 

 Or brave in ships the terrors of the deep.^ 



It was given also the properties of an antidote to all 

 manner of stings, poisons, and enchantments, of a protector 

 of the crops from plagues of caterpillars, flies, and pests of 

 various kinds, and of a universal drug to cure the diseases of 

 mankind. 



The belief in the properties thus conferred upon coral 

 by Minerva spread with the trade to the most distant parts 

 of the Old World, and persists among the peasants of many 

 countries, in one form or another, even to the present day. 



We have very little information concerning the use of 

 coral by the Greeks, beyond the reference to it in the poem 

 by Orpheus. In recent excavations on the sites of ancient 

 Greek cities, no specimens of coral in ornaments have been 

 brought to light. In the Royal Albert Museum there is a 

 copy of a pair of earrings in each of which there is a large 

 bead of pink coral. These earrings were found in the Crimea 

 and are believed to be of Greek workmanship of the fourth 

 century B.C. 



Minns '^ states that corals have been found in the tombs 

 of the ancient Scythians, and that it was the custom among 

 the Asiatic nomads to adorn the flanks of creatures in their 

 art work with blue stone or coral inlaid. 



There can be little doubt, however, that both Greeks and 

 Romans used coral in ancient times in the form of amulets 

 of various kinds to ward off evils from children and to 

 protect adults from real or imaginary dangers. Pliny says : 

 " Haruspices religiosum coralli gestamen amoliendis peri- 

 culis arbitrantur ; et surculi infantiae alhgati tutelam habere 

 creduntur." 



But neither the Greeks nor the Romans seem to have 

 valued coral as an article of jewellery or for inlaid decorative 

 work on swords, shields, breast-plates, or other objects in 

 the same way or to the same extent as the Oriental races 

 and the Celts, and thus it came about that a trade was estab- 



1 From a translation of the poem by Orpheus of Thrace by C W. 

 King in The Natural History of Precious Stones and Gems, 1865. 

 - E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 1913, pp. 65 and 268. 



