The Pearl, its story, its charm, and its value

by Wallis Richard Cattelle

Affected doubtless by the splendor of Asiatic courts, the rude soldiers of Rome learned to regard the pearl as a royal luxury, and therefore adopted it as a sign of great wealth and power. Enormous sums were paid for pearls of rare size and beauty. Great leaders of men vied with each other in the effort to add to their collections. It is said that Julius Cæsar's chief incentive for pushing his conquests into the west so far, was his desire to obtain the pearls to be found in the streams of the British Isles. The Emperor Caligula decked his favorite horse with a necklace of pearls. Pliny says of Lollia Paulina, Caligula's wife, that he had seen her so bedecked with pearls and precious stones that "she glittered and shone like the sun as she went." Clodius, the glutton, claiming for them a very delicate flavor, placed one by the plate of each guest at a great banquet to be mixed with the wine. This same profligate, either setting the example or emulating Cleopatra, swallowed in a cup of wine one worth eight thousand pounds that he might have the pleasure of consuming so much value at once.

If in the intrigues so common then, a woman's influence was required, pearls were given her. To convey an indirect bribe to a man of high station a pearl of great price was presented to a member of his family. Women wore them while they slept that they might possess them in their dreams; they hung them in loose clusters suspended from the ears, that the tinkling might remind them of the beauty they could not see, and to attract the admiration and envy of others. These were called "crotalia," meaning "rattles." Young men of fortune in Athens and Rome followed the Persian fashion of wearing one in the right ear, hung as a clapper in a small bell of metal. So strong and general did the desire to own them become that Cæsar forbade unmarried women, and women under a certain rank, to wear them.

Perhaps never in the history of jewels has the vogue of one so nearly approached a frenzy as that of the pearl in Rome during her days of extreme power and grandeur. The high esteem in which it was held there is reflected in the Scriptures. The Saviour used it in His parables as a symbol. The gates of the Holy City, as the prophet John saw it in his vision, were pearls. From that time until now, writers have used pearls to symbolize purity, innocence and the highest type of feminine beauty. To say that a woman's teeth were like pearls has been the poets' favorite adulation, and the discovery and sale of great pearls has been deemed of sufficient importance by travellers and historians to record them.

Much of the literature of pearls is founded on the statements of Pliny regarding them: many, if not most, of the absurd beliefs as to their origin and superstitions concerning them, may be traced to the same source; and though these ancient errors have been repeatedly exposed by later scientists and naturalists the poetic absurdities of the industrious Roman compiler, gathered from contemporaneous writers and tradition are current to-day, for they appeal more to the child-like human love of the indefinite wonderful than the exact statements of research, though the latter are really more marvellous.

Though jewels are regarded by many as baubles and of little account among the great commercial interests of the world, they have been an important factor in shaping the destiny of nations, changing the borders of great countries and thereby aiding the progress of civilization. As pearls helped materially to bring Rome to the British Isles and the colonists of Spain to South America, so it is quite probable that the pearls of Egypt had their influence in drawing the Macedonians to that country, to be followed by the Romans when the latter sought to overturn the Macedonian empire. Beyond this, their influence among those who held the reins in the government of empires, or those having power with them that did, cannot be estimated.

Passing beyond the days of Greece and Rome to more remote times and countries, we come to the realms of conjecture. We know that pearls were known and used as jewels in Egypt under the Ptolemies. Chares of Mytilene mentioned that they were worn by women of the East about the neck and arms and even upon the feet. It is said there is a word for them in a Chinese dictionary four thousand years old.

There is evidence that they had been used in India and the far East long before the West had knowledge of those countries, but we have nothing recorded which penetrates the past beyond three to four hundred years B.C., for there is not as much mention made of them in ancient writings familiar to the West as of other precious stones. Nevertheless the pearl is among the most ancient in the nomenclature of jewels because when it did come to be written of only the one thing could be meant. Nature produces nothing similar with which it could be confounded, whereas it is not certain that the diamond, ruby, and other stones as we know them, were intended when the names by which we designate them were used. Such indiscriminate use of names has been made by translators that it is difficult to determine what the stones really were about which ancient authors wrote. The names of those in the Jewish High Priest's breastplate, given in our English version of the Old Testament, undoubtedly misrepresent the stones actually used, and the only thing authorities agree upon regarding the names is that they are incorrect.

As there was no definite knowledge of the crystallography and chemistry of stones in the old days, writers referred to them often in general terms rather than by specific names, and these were translated into the names of later times according to the understanding of the translator, who had neither expert knowledge of his own nor reliable literature from which to gather information or guidance. An illustration of this general confusion occurs in the book of Job XXVIII. 18. It is written there, "No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies." Scholars tell us that the words translated here "coral" and "pearls," signify "found in high places," and are thought to be precious stones though the variety is unknown. The Targum renders the first "Sandalchin," probably our sardonyx. Junius and Tremellius translated it "Sandaztros" in their Latin version of the Old Testament, whereas Pliny described it as a sort of carbuncle having shining golden drops in the body of it.

After the same manner the last sentence, "For the price of wisdom is above rubies" is rendered by the great oriental scholar Bochart, "The extraction of wisdom is greater than the extraction of pearls," and other authorities agree with him.