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.