Cliap. 60.J 
THE MUEEX. 
441 
same at Eome ; 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 rro 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, Eenestella says — in this, how- 
ever, it is quite evident that he is mistaken, for ^lius 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 NATIJKE 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^''' 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 Csecilia Metella. It is alluded to by Horace, B. ii. Sat. iii. 
1. 239. 
6' Or " conchylium." We find that Pliny generally makes a diiference 
between the colours of the "murex," or "conchylium," and those of the 
"purpura," or " purple.'* Cuvier saj^s, 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 of Lin- 
ngeus, distil a kind of red liquid. The dearness of it arose, Cuvier thinks, 
from the remarkably small quantity that each animal afi'orded. Since the 
coccus, or kermes, he says, came to be well known, and more especially 
since the ISTcav World has supplied us with cochineal, we are no Tonger 
necessitated to have recourse to the juices of the murex. 
