90 EDIBLE BRITISH MOLLUSCA. 



hands and feet, of which the Persians are very fond, 

 as are the Medes, and all Asiatics, esteeming them as 

 much more valuable than golden ornaments.* Occasion- 

 ally, they are called stones; and bones, by Greek Authors; 

 and Tertullian calls them maladies of shellfish and 

 warts " concharum vitia et verrucas." Pliny statesf 

 that when pearls grow old they become thick and adhere 

 to the shell, from which they can only be separated by 

 a file ; again, that pearls which have one surface flat 

 and the other spherical, opposite to the plane side, are 

 for that reason called tympania, or tambour-pearls, 

 " quibus una tantum est facies, et ab ea rotunditas, 

 aversis planities, ob id tympania nominatur." The 

 " tympana," or hand-drums of the ancients, were often 

 of a semi-globular shape, like the kettle-drums of the 

 present day. Shells which had pearls still adhering 

 to them were used as boxes for unguents. J Long 

 pear-shaped pearls, called elenchi, had their peculiar 

 value, resembling in form the alabaster boxes which 

 were used for ointments. Earrings were invented by 

 the Roman ladies, called crotalia, or castanet pendants, 

 from the pearls rattling as they knocked against each 

 other. The story of Cleopatra swallowing the pearl 

 in order that she might say she had expended on a 

 single entertainment ten millions of sesterces, is too well 

 known to require repeating here; suffice it to say, that 

 Pliny informs us that before the time of Antony and 

 Cleopatra, Clodius, the son of the tragic actor ^Esopus, 

 had done the same at Koine ; " he, having dissolved in 



* * Athenseus/ vol. i. p. 155. 



t Ibid. vol. ii., bk. ix., p. 433. 



Pliny, ' Nat. Hist.' vol. ii. bk. ix. p. 432. 



Ibid. vol. ii. bk. ix., p. 435. 



