Cbap. 60.J THE MUREX. 441 



same at Borne ; having been left by his father heir to his am- 

 ple wealth and possessions. Let not Antony then be too 

 proud, for all his trumvirate, since he can hardly stand in com- 

 parison with an actor ; one, too, who had no wager to induce 

 him a thing which adds to the regal munificence of the act 

 but was merely desirous of trying, by way of glorification 

 to his palate, what was the taste of pearls. As he found it to 

 be wonderfully pleasing, that he might not be the only one to 

 know it, he had a pearl set before each of his guests for him 

 to swallow. After the surrender of Alexandria, pearls came 

 into common and, indeed, universal use at Eome; but they 

 first began to be used about the time of Sylla, though but of 

 small size and of little value, Fenestella says in this, how- 

 ever, it is quite evident that he is mistaken, for ^Elius Stilo 

 tells us, that it was in the time of the Jugurthine war, that 

 the name of " unio " was first given to pearls of remarkable 

 size. 



CHAP. 60. THE NATURE OF THE MUREX AND THE PURPLE. 



And yet pearls may be looked upon as pretty nearly a pos- 

 session of everlasting duration they descend from a man to 

 his heir, and they are alienated from one to another just like 

 any landed estate. But the colours that are extracted from 

 the murex 67 and the purple fade from hour to hour ; and yet 

 luxury, which has similarly acted as a mother to them, has 

 set upon them prices almost equal to those of pearls. 



JEsopus. This man, among his other feats, dissolved in vinegar (or at 

 least attempted to do so), a pearl worth about 8000, which he took from 

 the ear-ring of Caecilia Metella. It is alluded to by Horace, B. ii. Sat. iii. 

 1. 239. 



67 Or " conchylium." We find that Pliny generally makes a difference 

 between the colours of the " murex," or " conchylium," and those of the 

 "purpura," or " purple." Cuvier says, that they were the names of dif- 

 ferent shell-fish which the ancients employed for dyeing in purple of 

 various shades. It is not known exactly, at the present day, what species 

 they employed ; but it is a fact well ascertained, that the greater part of 

 the univalve shell-fish, more especially the Buccini and Murices or Lin- 

 naeus, distil a kind of red liquid. The dearness of it arose, Cuvier thinks, 

 from the remarkably small quantity that each animal afforded. Since the 

 coccus, or kermes, lie says, came to be well known, and more especially 

 since the New World has supplied us with cochineal, we are no longer 

 necessitated to have recourse to the juices of the murex. 



