A Priceless Pearl

I remember reading a book, whose title escapes me, about a good time girl who decided to go straight. And that she was successful was shown in the last pages of the book when she was described as dressed in a little black dress, wearing the understated elegance of a string of pearls. Pearls, it seemed, showed quiet arrival, unlike the diamond’s vulgar swagger.

While cultured pearls in the modern era has made pearls a common possession, it used to be known as the Queen of gems for its beauty and its rarity. And a number of modern beauties, including Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor, saw fit to wear them on their wedding day. Indeed, the ancient Greeks believed that a bride who was lucky enough to be married wearing pearls, would enjoy a happy married life.

The most famous moment in history, where pearls are mentioned, is in the beginning of the love story between Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Wanting to convince the Roman hero how useful Egypt could be to the Roman Empire, she made a bet with the Roman that she could offer him the most expensive dinner that any man ever had in the whole of the human history.

With that, she provided herself with a goblet of wine, unclipped one of her pearl earrings, crushed it, and after dissolving it in the liquid, drank it to the last drop. Apparently, this was a meal worth millions of dollars in today’s currency. As regards the matching earring, this was supposedly cut in half and made, appropriately, into earrings for the statue of Venus in the Pantheon in Rome.

In the past, pearls symbolized innocence and purity and considered appropriate for a bride. At the height of their popularity in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, royal weddings were not complete without pearls. In some cases it was not only the bride who wore pearls, but every guest attending the wedding.

While in the more recent years pearls were often given as a wedding gift to the bride by her parents – as in the case of Jacqueline Kennedy – in the past they were often associated with all sorts of mystical powers. They were thought to impart peace and serenity to the mind, and health to the body.

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