Waterfowl in Greco-Roman art

Ducks, geese, and swans were often depicted on serving ware in both Greek and Roman households. Although fish was a more common protein source than ducks and geese, even the humiliores occasionally enjoyed poultry.  Following his triumph, Caesar sponsored a public feast for 260,000 of the poorer people of Rome, offering them ducks and geese as well as seafood and game.  

But waterfowl as art was used to appeal to Greek and Roman intellect as well as to their stomachs.  In addition to their inclusion in myth such as  the legendary transformation of Zeus into a swan to seduce Leda, these species appeared multiple times in popular works of Aesop and Aristophanes as they were deemed "characterful" enough to lend themselves to literary purposes.  In his play "The Birds", Aristophanes points out that a goose could act as an agent of Eros when used as a competitive gift exchanged in the homosexual courtship between an erastês and his young erômenos.

Some scholars, like Pliny the Elder, also thought these birds possessed "intellectus sapientiae," an understanding of wisdom. In his Natural History, Pliny relates the story of a goose that attached itself as the constant companion of the philosopher Lacydes, never separating from him either in public or at the baths, and either by night or day.

It is not surprising, then, that they were among the 69 species identified as subjects of paintings, mosaics, and sculptures found in the remains of Roman structures in Pompeii and other cities that survived the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Image: Silver Wine Strainer from Greece, 2nd half of the 4th century BCE, now in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and on display at the Getty Villa in Gallery 111.  Image courtesy of the museum.

Note: The form and decoration of this silver strainer were popular in the 300s BCE, especially in Macedonia in northern Greece. The flanged rim and projecting handles allowed the strainer to rest on the rim of a container. The perforations in the strainer's bowl form an elegant whirligig surrounded by concentric circles. The Getty describes the ends of the handles as terminating in ducks' heads but I think geese or swan heads are more likely due to the long necks that curve sinuously out from the wide base, which is engraved with palmettes.

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Tiresias, soothsayer extraordinaire

In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance  and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. Like other oracles, how Tiresias obtained his information varied: sometimes, he would receive visions, other times he would listen for the songs of birds, or ask for a description of visions and pictures appearing within the smoke of burnt offerings or entrails, and so interpret them. Pliny the Elder credits Tiresias with the invention of augury. In his text De Divinatione, Cicero admits several other nations besides the Romans paid attention to the patterns of flying birds as signs from the gods as well.  Tiresias became a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history.

According to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, different stories were told of the cause of Tiresias' blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. An alternative story told by Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas". In it, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked.  His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not. Instead, she cleaned his ears, giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury. In a separate episode, Tiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed, or, as Zeus claimed, the woman. As Tiresias had experienced both, Tiresias replied, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her or reverse her curse, but in recompense he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives.

Tiresias makes a dramatic appearance in the Odyssey, book XI, in which Odysseus calls up the spirits of the dead (the nekyia). "So sentient is Tiresias, even in death," observes Marina Warner "that he comes up to Odysseus and recognizes him and calls him by name before he has drunk the black blood of the sacrifice. Even Odysseus' own mother cannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself."  Tiresias tells Odysseus how to get past Scylla and Charybdis. He even gave him advice where he should not eat the cattle of Helios on Thrinacia (advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, which led to them getting killed by Zeus' thunderbolts during a storm).

Odysseus, seated between Eurylochos and Perimedes, consulting the shade of Tiresias; to left Eurylochos wearing pilos and chlamys. Side A from a Lucanian red-figured calyx-krater, ca. 380 BCE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Sailko.

Closeup of Odysseus, seated between Eurylochos and Perimedes, consulting the shade of Tiresias; to left Eurylochos wearing pilos and chlamys. Side A from a Lucanian red-figured calyx-krater, ca. 380 BCE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen

Silver, two-handled cup with relief decoration depicting Tiresias and Odysseus on one side and a group of philosophers (here) on the other, Roman 25 BCE-100 CE, courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Encircling this two-handled drinking cup is a scene from Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey. The Greek hero Odysseus has traveled to the Underworld to consult the ghost of the blind seer Teiresias—the only one who can tell him how to return home to Ithaca. Odysseus, shown brandishing his sword, has just sacrificed a ram to summon the spirits of the dead. Teiresias and another figure are shown sitting on rocks. The other side of the cup depicts a group of men in conversation—seven figures, all older men wearing cloaks, who may be identified as philosophers. The handles are decorated with foliate patterns on the tops of their shafts above the rim, and at their attachment plates to the body of the cup. The foot is decorated with a sharp fillet near the top, and with a beaded band and ovolo atop the footplate.

Roman domestic silver of fine quality often displayed images referring to Greek myth and literature. Cups decorated with narrative subjects inspired discussion at refined dinner parties, where guests could identify the scenes and admire their host's taste. Heavy, silver drinking cups with repoussé decoration were very popular in the first century A.D. Such vessels were formed from an outer case decorated with the relief and a plain inner liner soldered together. The feet and handles were made separately and soldered on. 

Silver, two-handled cup with relief decoration depicting Tiresias and Odysseus (here) on one side and a group of philosophers on the other, Roman 25 BCE-100 CE, courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

 

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One-eyed warriors and gold-guarding griffins

 The relief on this elegantly worked roundel depicts a nude youth being attacked by a griffin. It relates to legends, first mentioned by the ancient Greek writer Herodotus, of the people called Arimasps who lived east of the Black Sea.Their land was rich in gold, but the gold was guarded by fierce griffins. The subject became popular during the Hellenistic period, especially for terracottas produced in Tarentum. It is likely that these South Italian models inspired the Central Italian adaptation on this bronze. - Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Arimaspi were a legendary tribe of one-eyed people of northern Scythia who lived in the foothills of the Riphean Mountains, variously identified with the Ural or Carpathian mountains.  The tales of their struggles with gold-guarding griffins in the Hyperborean lands beyond Thrace, reported by Herodotus, were originally told in a lost archaeic poem, Arimaspea, by Aristeas,  a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor, active during the 7th century BCE.   Strabo and Pliny's Natural History perpetuated the fables about the northern people who had a single eye in the center of their foreheads and engaged in stealing gold from the griffins.

Scholars point out that the struggle between the Arimaspi and the griffins has remarkable similarities to Homer's account of the Pygmaioi warring with cranes:

"...when the cranes escape the winter time and the rains unceasing and clamorously wing their way to the streaming Ocean, bringing to the Pygmaian men bloodshed and destruction..." - Homer, The Iliad

In his History of Animals, Aristotle claims the story is true, "these birds [the cranes] migrate from the steppes of Scythia to the marshlands south of Egypt where the Nile has its source. And it is here, by the way, that they are said to fight with the pygmies. The story is not fabulous, as there is in reality a race of dwarfish men, and the horses are little in proportion, and the men live in caves underground."

The Roman poet Ovid also describes such an age-old battle in one of his stories when a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, was transformed into a crane.

Modern historians speculate Herodotus or his source may have understood the Scythian word as a combination of the roots arima ("one") and spou ("eye") and to have created a mythic image to account for it. This similarity of name and location, however, could point to the ancestors of the local Uralic people, the Mari.

Bronze lid and upper part of an oil flask depicting a youth being attacked by a griffin, 4th century BCE, Praenestine, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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The First Mirrors

The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of obsidian mirrors found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) have been dated to around 6000 BCE. Mirrors of polished copper were crafted in Mesopotamia beginning around 4000 BCE, and in ancient Egypt from around 3000 BCE. Polished stone mirrors from Central and South America date from around 2000 BCE onwards. Some of the earliest examples of Bronze Age copper mirrors were produced by the Qijia culture (2200 BCE-1600 BCE)  distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China.

Glass began to be used for mirrors in the 1st century CE, with the development of soda-lime glass and glass blowing. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder claims that artisans in Sidon (modern-day Lebanon) were producing glass mirrors coated with lead or gold leaf in the back. The metal provided good reflectivity, and the glass provided a smooth surface and protected the metal from scrathes and tarnishing. However, no archeological evidence of glass mirrors dating  before the third century CE have been found.

Socrates urged young people to look at themselves in mirrors so that, if they were beautiful, they would become worthy of their beauty, and if they were ugly, they would know how to hide their disgrace through learning.

Image: Greek bronze box mirror with relief of a woman wearing a silver earring from the last quarter of the 4th century BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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Owls: Symbols of Wisdom or Harbingers of Death

Those of us who study the ancient world are familiar with Athena's owl and its association with wisdom and vigilance but even in the ancient world owls were not always viewed in such a positive light.  Pliny the Elder tells us Rome had to undergo a lustration, a purification of the entire city normally performed at the conclusion of the taking of the census every five years, because an owl found its way into the Capitolia. Pliny describes the owl as a funereal bird, a monster of the night and the very abomination of human kind.  Virgil describes an owl's death-howl as a precursor to Dido's death and Ovid speaks of the bird's presence as an evil omen.

Surprisingly, the same viewpoint was held by the Aztecs and Maya who considered the owl a symbol of death and destruction.  The Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli, was often depicted with owls.  The Popol Vuh, a Mayan religious text, describes owls as messengers of Xibalba (the Mayan "Place of Fright").  Later tribes of Native Americans also believed owls were messengers and represented supernatural forces.  Apache and Seminole people associated owls with the spirits of the dead and the bony circles around an owl's eyes are said to comprise the fingernails of apparitional humans.  The Hopi associated owls with sorcery and the Ojibwe used an owl as a symbol for both evil and death. Pueblo people associated owls with Skeleton Man, the god of death and spirit of fertility. Other tribes, though, had a less dire viewpoint.  Pawnee tribes viewed owls as the symbol of protection from any danger within their realms. Yakama tribes use an owl as a powerful totem, often to guide where and how forests and natural resources are useful with management.

Owl in a Roman mosaic in the Archaelogical Museum of El Jem, Tunisia courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Effi Schweizer

Owl with the inscription from an Attic black-figure amphora, ca 500 BCE at the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Bibi Saint-Pol

Owl from the Athenian Acropolis 5th century BCE at the Acropolis Museum courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Wpopp.

Armed owl Attic red-figure Anthesteria oinochoe, ca 410–390 BCE at the Louvre courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen

Owl-shaped protocorinthian aryballos at the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Bibi Saint-Pol

Large Native American owl shaped mortar from the Columbia Plateau region photographed at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington.

Native American Stone Owl Effigies from the Columbia River region photographed at the Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale, Washington.

Silver Vessel in the form of an owl found in the silver hoard of Hacienda Mocollope in the Chicama Valley of Peru 14th-15th century CE photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painting of an owl in the Vienna Dioscoride manuscript dated to 512 CE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Owl-shaped Zun wine vessel Shang Dynasty, 1600 - 1046 BCE courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art

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Review: A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome by J.C. McKeown

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2017

Galen, one of the ancient world's most revered physicians, once said, "The only difference between doctors in Rome and highwaymen is that the doctors do their work in the city, not in the mountains."

What a cynical viewpoint from one of the best of his profession! Obviously, attitudes toward health care were as controversial in the ancient world as they are now, judging from all of the anguish expressed lately by members of the U.S. Congress. It is with these controversies in mind that J.C. McKeown, Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison collected quotes from the ancient sources to produce A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome.

McKeown groups his quotes by category, including medicine, religion and magic, the doctor in society, attitudes towards doctors (that included the quote above), anatomy, sex matters, women and children, preventative medicine, treatment and diagnosis, and cures (many dubious if not outrageous.)
Much of the "wisdom" of the ancients he includes in his text leaves you scratching your head or, in some cases, outright appalled. Individuals whose teachings have been the foundation of medical ethics for centuries have expressed sentiments towards the healing arts that I certainly did not expect.

For example, Hippocrates himself once said "I shall begin with a definition of what I consider medicine to be, it consists of freeing patients from their disease, dulling the intensity of diseases, and not taking on hopeless cases, since medicine can do nothing for them."

He goes on to explain, "Some people criticize the medical art because of doctors who refuse to take on hopeless cases. They claim that those they do take on would recover by themselves, while they do not touch those who do need help. If medicine really is an art, they assert, it should cure all alike...But, whenever someone suffers from a disease that is too strong for the resources available to medicine, there should be no expectation that such an affliction can be overcome through medicine."

Hippocrates, the so-called "father of medicine" sounds like an ancient insurance company executive!

Two icons of health in the ancient world, Asclepius god
of medicine and healing and his daughter Hygeia
personification of health depicted as household gods. Roman
100-150 CE Bronze.Photographed at The Getty Villa,
Pacific Palisades, CA by Mary Harrsch © 2006

Other quotes, though, elicited a smile.  Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia opines, "It is better to have sexual intercourse infrequently, though it revitalizes sluggish athletes, restores a husky voice, and cures back pain, dull vision, mental problems, and depression."

Some even cloaked a hint of truth within their admonitions. In his On Medicine, Aulus Cornelius Celsus warns, "People with weak constitutions  —most city dwellers and practically everyone who is keen on literature belong in this category — need to monitor their health more carefully than other people, so that by taking precautions they may compensate for the deficiencies in their physical well-being or in their environment or in their activities."

Apparently, Celsus believed anyone who read much must obviously be the Roman version of a couch potato!

One reviewer pointed out that McKeown's little book is best consumed in small bites and I would tend to agree. It is not written as a page turner and McKeown has not made any effort to interpret the remarks or even provide some degree of context to them. But, it certainly raised my awareness of such issues as eugenics in the classical world (see my resulting blog post, Ancient Eugenics: Much More Than Just Selective Infanticide), the ancient practice of talk therapy (I thought it was a modern construct), and that the ancients, though famous for their culinary binges, even dealt with anorexia.  In other words, it made me think! 

A preview:



More suggested reading:

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How did the ancients colorfast their textiles?

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2015

Today, I received an email about a new exhibition of Indian textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  As I read through the article and admired photographs of the beautiful clothing and fabrics on display I was particularly intrigued by a statement that a young Frenchman, Antoine de Beaulieu, an employee of the French Compagnie des Indes had committed industrial espionage to learn the secrets of Indian dyeing techniques.  He discovered the Indians used metallic salts, called mordants, that, when combined with dyes, formed an insoluble compound on natural fibers making textiles both colorful and colorfast.

French "Indienne", "Le Grand Corail", a printed or painted textile in the manner of Indian productions, which used mordants to fix the dyes.  Photographed at the Musée du textile de Wesserling, Alsace, France by Rémi Stosskopf.  Image released
to the public domain.

The article mentioned that the use of mordants was known in the Mediterranean world (and apparently India) in ancient times but had been lost to Europe for centuries.  Naturally, this made me curious to learn more about it.

Many of us who study ancient history have read about the production of the highly valued purple dye from snail shells and how it was sought after for imperial robes and senatorial toga stripes.  But I hadn't really considered what had to be done to make such colorful garments colorfast.  Considering fullers' use of strong chemical baths incorporating urine, colorfastness of dyed fabrics had to have been important.

The fullonica (laundry) of Greek freedman Stephanos in
Pompeii, Italy.  Photo by Mary Harrsch © 2005

So, I began my research into the history of mordants (sometimes spelled mordents).  I discovered that some of the ancient recipes for mordants were found in a stash of papyri recovered in 1828 (presumably by grave robbers) from burial sites near Thebes in central Egypt.  The scrolls, tentatively dated to the late 3rd or early 4th century CE (Greco-Roman Period), were written in Greek.  The sheets of papyri were in excellent condition, probably originally placed in sealed containers as part of a funerary offering gift for use in the afterlife.

Initially, the recipes were thought to be "alchemical" in nature - recipes used for the magical transformation of metals.  A portion of the original sheets were sent to the Museum of Antiquities at the University of Leyden in 1929 and the balance were shipped off to the Swedish Royal Academy of Antiquities in 1932.  Since the papers at the University of Leyden had been catalogued as alchemical, they did not draw much attention from chemical historians until the papyri were finally translated into Latin in 1885.  The papyri at the Swedish Royal Academy of Antiquities languished until they were finally translated in 1913 and associated with the Leyden scrolls by Austrian chemist and historian Edmund von Lippmann.  In 1924, Englishman John Maxson Stillman published "Story of Early Chemistry" combining informaton from both sets of documents.  This text remains one of the most widely studied books on classical chemistry.

"As a reading of these translations quickly reveals, neither papyrus contains the mystical symbolism and allegorical indirection so typical of the true alchemical literature. Rather they consist largely of simple, short recipes. In the case of the Leyden papyrus these focus primarily on the preparation of various metal alloys – many of which are intended to imitate the appearance of either gold or silver – for use in making jewelry, in gilding, or in metallic writing, while a few others deal instead with dyes of various sorts. The contents of the Stockholm papyrus have the same form, but focus more on dyeing and the imitation of various precious stones and gems. " - William Jensen, The Leyden and Stockholm papyri: Greco-Egyptian chemical documents from the early 4th century AD

As it turns out, though, these papyri aren't the oldest references to dyeing and the imitation of gemstones, either.  In 1925 British Assyriologist R. Campbell Thompson and German Assyriologist H. Zimmern each independently published translations of several cuneiform tablets dating from the 7th century BCE containing practical recipes for the preparation of colored glasses.

Cuneiform tablet from Assyrian trading post Anatolia,
circa 1875-1840 B.C. Photographed at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art by Mary Harrsch © 2005

We also have a reference in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historiae, written two centuries before the Leyden and Stocklholm papyri, describing the commercial production of counterfeit gems and precious stones using dyes in the 1st century CE:

"Nay, even more than this, there are books in existence, the authors of which I forbear to name, which give instructions how to stain crystal in such a way as to imitate smaragdus and other transparent stones, how to make sardonyx of sarda, and other gems in a similar manner. Indeed, there is no other kind of fraud practiced by which larger profits are made." - Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historiae

But, Pliny was most amazed by Egyptian dyeing processes that used mordants to obtain color variations in textiles using the same dye solution:

"In Egypt garments are dyed according to a remarkable process. They are first cleaned, then soaked, not in dye, but in various substances that absorb dye. These substances do not at first show in the materials, but when the materials have been dipped into the dyeing tun, they can be removed, after being stirred about, completely dyed. The most wonderful thing about this is that, although the tun contains only one kind of dye, the materials suddenly appear dyed different colors, according to the nature of the dye-absorbing substances used, and these colors are not only resistant to washing, but materials so dyed actually wear better." - Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historiae

A fresco from the Fullonica of  Verania Hypsaeus in Pompeii
 depicting the cleaning of fabric 1st century CE.

Unfortunately, counterfeiting gems must have been a relatively successful and problematic activity across the Roman Empire because the emperor Diocletian issued an edict  around 290 CE ordering the destruction of all documents relating to the manufacture and imitation of gold and silver to prevent the debasement of currency and the funding of insurrections.  This information was included in the same compendiums as the use of mordants and dyes in the textile industry.  So these valuable processes were lost to the west in what must have become a Roman book burning.

So, what did the ancients use to produce these marvelous results?  According to William B. Jensen of the University of Cincinnati,  105 materials of mineral origin, 88 of plant origin, and 16 of animal origin were included in recipes contained in The Leyden and Stockholm Papyri. Among the most frequently cited in the mineral category are alum, copper, crystal, and gold (though often as a color rather than as a material), whereas alkanet, archil and especially vinegar are the winners in the plant category, and urine and wool in the animal category.

If you're into recreation of textiles processed with these ancient methods, the recipes are available in English in "The Leyden and Stockholm Papyri: Greco-Egyptian Chemical Documents From the early 4th Century AD" by William B. Jensen.

The Fabric of India exhibit will be on display from October 3, 2015 - January 10, 2016 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

References:

Caley, E., & Jensen, W. (2008). The Leyden and Stockholm papyri: Greco-Egyptian chemical documents from the early 4th century AD. Cinncinatti, Ohio: University of Cinncinatti.

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Antony and Cleopatra a Love/Hate Relationship?

I finished reading Colleen McCullough's latest addition to her "Masters of Rome" series of novels, "Antony and Cleopatra" and found her characterization of the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra as one of a combination of love and exasperation to be quite convincing.

This seems to be born out by a quote by Pliny the Elder that I stumbled across today on a very good website offering essays on the history and culture of Rome:

"Pliny (XXI.7.9) relates how Cleopatra played on Antony's fear of being poisoned. Refusing to take any food that had not been tasted [sic], she instead laid a garland of poisoned flowers on his head, suggesting, as the revelry grew wilder, that they all drink their chaplets. As Antony began to drink from the cup into which he had scattered his flowers, she stopped him. A prisoner was brought in and commanded to drink, dying on the spot."

This act, if indeed it ever happened, appears to be much less playful than Cleopatra ordering a diver to go underwater and tie a dried fish to Antony's fishing line.

Of course Pliny is also the source for the story of Cleopatra dissolving one of her almost priceless pearls in a cup of vinegar to impress Antony:

"There have been two pearls that were the largest in the whole of history; both were owned by Cleopatra, the last of the Queens of Egypt--they had come down to her through the hands of the Kings of the East....In accordance with previous instructions the servants placed in front of her only a single vessel containing vinegar, the strong rough quality of which can melt pearls. She was at the moment wearing in her ears that remarkable and truly unique work of nature. Antony was full of curiosity to see what in the world she was going to do. She took one earring off and dropped the pearl in the vinegar, and when it was melted swallowed it....With this goes the story that, when that queen who had won on this important issue was captured, the second of this pair of pearls was cut in two pieces, so that half a helping of the jewel might be in each of the ears of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome." - Pliny, Natural History (IX.59.119-121)

The value of the pearl that Cleopatra dropped in her cup was said by Pliny to be worth ten million sesterces (a hundred thousand gold aurei). It's as if Antony and Cleopatra were engaged in constant competition to see which one could outdo the other in startling behavior.

This page, peppered with interesting asides, also mentions Julius Caesar restricting the wearing of pearls to individuals with a certain status. It's an anecdote about him I had not read before:

"Suetonius relates that Caesar had attempted to restrict the wearing of pearls, a symbol of wealth and prestige, only "to those of a designated position and age" (XLIII).

Suetonius goes on to attribute Caesar's invasion of Britain to a desire for the fresh-water pearls found there and that, "in comparing their size he sometimes weighed them with his own hand" (XLVII)."

I also had to chuckle at Seneca's wit when criticizing the ostentatiousness of Roman women wearing pearls. "Seneca (On Benefits, VII.9) complains that the ears of women are trained to carry pearls in pairs, with another fastened above, and are not content unless the value of two or three estates hang from each lobe." If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!