Yet not all the men of Rome were enthusiastic over the beautiful “gems of the sea, which resemble milk and snow,” as the poet Manlius called them. Even then, as now, there were some faultfinders. The immortal Cæsar interdicted their use by women beneath a certain rank; Martial and Tibullus inveighed against them; the witty Horace directed his stinging shafts of satire against the extravagance. Referring to a woman named Gellia, Martial wrote: “By no gods or goddesses does she swear, but by her pearls. These she embraces and kisses. These she calls her brothers and sisters. She loves them more dearly than her two sons. Should she by some chance lose them, the miserable woman would not survive an hour.”[15] Hear what stern old Seneca had to say: “Pearls offer themselves to my view. Simply one for each ear? No! The lobes of our ladies have attained a special capacity for supporting a great number. Two pearls alongside of each other, with a third suspended above, now form a single earring! The crazy fools seem to think that their husbands are not sufficiently tormented unless they wear the value of an inheritance in each ear!”[16] The prices reported for some choice ones at that time seem fabulous. It is recorded by Suetonius, that the Roman general, Vitellius, paid the expenses of a military campaign with the proceeds of one pearl from his mother’s ears: “_Atque ex aure matris detractum unionem pigneraverit ad itineris impensas_.” In his “_Historia naturalis_,” Pliny says that in the first century A.D., they ranked first in value among all precious things,[17] and reports sixty million sestertii[18] as the value of the two famous pearls—“the singular and only jewels of the world and even nature’s wonder”—which Cleopatra wore at the celebrated banquet to Mark Antony. And Suetonius[19] places at six million sestertii the value of the one presented by Julius Cæsar as a tribute of love to Servilia, the mother of Brutus, who thus wore The spoils of nations in an ear, Changed to the treasure of a shell. Or, as St. Jerome expressed it in his “Vita Pauli Eremitæ”: _Uno filo villarum insunt pretia._ We are told by Ælius Lampridius that an ambassador once brought to Alexander Severus two remarkably large and heavy pearls for the empress. The emperor offered them for sale, and as no purchaser was found, he had them hung in the ears of the statue of Venus, saying: “If the empress should have such pearls, she would give a bad example to the other women, by wearing an ornament of so much value that no one could pay for it.” The word “margarita” was used symbolically to designate the most cherished object; for instance, a favorite child. In an inscription published by Fabretti, p. 44, No. 253, the word _margaritio_ has the same significance. (Sex. Bruttidio juveni margaritioni carissimo, vixit annis II mensibus VII, diebus XVIII.)[20]