An incident, mentioned by Plutarch, shows how distinctive was a gold ring.[44] When Cinna and Caius Marius were slaughtering the citizens of Rome, the slaves of Cornutus hid their master in the house and took a dead body out of the street from among the slain and hanged it by the neck, then they put a gold ring upon the finger, and showed the corse in that condition to Marius’s executioners; after which they dressed it for the funeral, and buried it as their master’s body. The rings of the classical ancients were rather incrusted than set in gold in our slight manner.[45] The first mention of a Roman gold ring is in the year 432 U. C.; but they, at last, were indiscriminately worn by the Romans. Three bushels were gathered out of the spoils after Hannibal’s victory at Cannæ.[46] “Lovely soft pearls, the fanciful images of sad tears,” have been used in rings from the time of the Latins. Cleopatra’s drinking off the residuum of a pearl, worth three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, aside from luxurious extravagance, seems to be somewhat nasty; but we are inclined to believe that this fond queen had faith in its supposed medicinal and talismanic properties: “---- Now I feed myself With most delicious passion.” Pliny, the Roman naturalist, gravely tells us that the oyster which produces pearls, does so from feeding on heavenly dew. Drummond thus translates him: “With open shells in seas, on heavenly dew, A shining oyster lusciously doth feed; And then the birth of that ethereal seed Shows, when conceived, if skies look dark or blue.”[47] Early English writers entertained the same notion; and Boethius, speaking of the pearl-mussel of the Scotch rivers, remarks, that “These mussels, early in the morning, when the sky is clear and temperate, open their mouths a little above the water and most greedily swallow the dew of heaven; and after the measure and quantity of the dew which they swallow, they conceive and breed the pearl. These mussels,” he continues, “are so exceedingly quick of touch and hearing, that, however faint the noise that may be made on the bank beside them, or however small the stone that may be thrown into the water, they sink at once to the bottom, knowing well in what estimation the fruit of their womb is to all people.” In the East, the belief is equally common that these precious gems are “---- rain from the sky, Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.” The ancient idea that pearls are generated of the dews of heaven, is pretty conclusively met by Cardanus,[48] who says it is fabulous, seeing that the shell fishes, in which they are conceived, have their residence in the very bottom of the depth of the sea. The charlatan Leoni de Spoleto prescribed the drink of dissolved pearls for Lorenzo the Magnificent, when he was attacked by fever aggravated by hereditary gout.[49]