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 vvearing 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 dang- 

 ling 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 diliinn, of three a 

 trelinm. 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 Natiiralis 

 in the first century of the Christian era, gives a 

 graphic description of the Pearls and other orna- 

 ments of a Roman empress at a private party. The 

 passage is translated by Holland in these quaint 

 terms : — *' I myselfe have scene Lollia Paulina (late 

 wife and after widdow to Caius Caligula the Em- 

 peror), when shee was dressed and set out, not in 



