Necklaces were worn by both Greek and Roman women, but only within doors, and on occasions of domestic festivity, as at weddings and dances; they were especially used as bridal presents, and the learned in mythology will remember that it was upon the occasion of Hermione's marriage that Vulcan, to revenge her mother's infidelity, bestowed upon her the fatal necklace which worked such wondrous evils on her race. Here we perceive that the Eastern superstitions connected with this ornament had accompanied the fashion of wearing it into Greece: the rich and beautiful necklace of Hermione was a talisman--not to counteract evil, but to produce it; so that by-and-by we find this very necklace, which Ovid tells us was of gold, and to the description of which Nomus devotes fifty lines of his Dionysica, bribing Eriphyle, the wife of Amphiaraus, to betray her husband. At Rome, as with the old Egyptians, the materials of the necklace soon altered from a simple row of berries or small spheres of glass, &c., to pearls and amber, and precious stones; the single chaplet, which primitively encircled the throat, gradually extended to a second, and even a third row: after which we find the original necklace adorned with drops or pendents, which, when worn, fell round the neck like rays from a centre. For this description of _monile_, emeralds, and other gems of a greenish hue, were greatly prized; and amongst the treasures which time has restored to the museums and cabinets of the curious, from the buried toilets of Pompeii, a golden necklace is enumerated, which was enriched with twelve small emeralds. Etruscan graves have also yielded up their treasures, and amongst a variety of other matters affording the most interesting illustrations of the domestic economies of the ancient Tuscan people, have preserved for us the fashion of these ornaments. Those purchased from the Prince of Canino, and deposited in the British Museum, are of gold; one represents a wreath of ivy-leaves in pairs, the stems of the leaves joining; and the ornaments of the others consist of circles, lozenges, rosettes, hippocampi (sea-horses), and a heart depends centrally from one of them. Necklaces in the shape of serpents were worn by the Greeks and Romans, by whom this emblem was regarded as a charm against witchcraft and the "evil eye;" they were made to coil round the neck of the wearer, and it is remarkable that the necklace so fatal to Hermione and Eriphyle was of this form. Some years back an inscription, found in France, mentioned a _torque_ dedicated to Æsculapius, having been made by twisting together two golden snakes, and offerings of trinkets in this shape were often made in honor of him by persons during illness, or on their recovery from it.