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.The portrait by Titian is exceptionally nice.Hepainted her when she was 36, but she asked him to make her look youngerand he did.The portrait features Isabella wearing a stone in her headdressthat may or may not be the reputed Tullia s emerald.Emeralds from SouthAmerica were known and were just filtering into Europe about this time, soit s possible the reputed emerald was from Colombia.But we are getting aheadof ourselves and must return to the Romans.One cannot talk about Roman emeralds without a close discussion of Plinythe Elder (23 79 ce), who was a Renaissance man, even though he was aRoman and the Renaissance hadn t been invented yet.In fact, the RomanEmpire itself was just getting into full swing.That didn t stop Pliny frombeing less dull than the average Roman.Most Romans were busy drinking,building roads, and chasing around after Gauls and Goths, but Pliny hadhigher things on his mind.Being a Roman, he did his fair share of fighting aswell, attacking Frisians and Chauci and the like, but his real passion was forwriting encyclopedias.Pliny was born in Como, Italy, although he is sometimes accused of beingfrom Verona.He lived as a cavalry officer, advised emperors, and wrote atleast 75 books without the help of a computer or even a fountain pen.Hepublished the world s first encyclopedia, the 37-volume (the first volumeEmeralds in World History 57was an index and bibliography) Natural History, in the year 77, in which hemodestly planned to  set forth in detail all the contents of the entire world.You can t say he wasn t ambitious.This work, by the way, is the first in historyto include the now ubiquitous preface and table of contents.He also wrote a20-volume history of the German Wars and a treatise on grammar, althoughthe obvious connection between the two subjects apparently escaped him.His eight-volume Problems in Grammar is a real classic.Pliny captured many of the emerald stories of his day (and may have beenthe first to actually call an emerald an emerald, at least in Latin).He believedthat emeralds cured leprosy, if they were ground up and applied as a poult-ice.This measure would be worth it if it actually cured the disease; however,it turns out that this is just a waste of an emerald.Pliny pronounced the emerald to be the only stone that delighted theeye without fatiguing it.He said of emeralds that  Nothing greens greenerand opined that emeralds were the only gem one could gaze at for a longtime without tiring the eye.This may have given rise to the belief thatemeralds guaranteed ophthalmic health.However, the gleam of emerald isnot so soothing to everybody.Pliny the Elder records the tale of a marble lionwith eyes of glittering emerald set over the tomb of a king named Hermias.The flashing eyes of the lion frightened the tunny-fish, to the despair of thefishermen.It took them a few months to figure out what was happening, butwhen they did, they insisted that the emerald eyes be removed and replacedwith other green stones.The fish came back afterwards.And fish aren t theonly ones made nervous by emeralds.In fact, the very sight of an emerald isdeadly to serpents.This was a belief held by Greeks, Egyptians, and Arabs.Still, Pliny recommended that those who had exhausted their eyes in closework should merely gaze upon an emerald for refreshment.Perhaps his advicewas valid, because during the first few centuries of the Common Era, gemengravers are said to have kept some of them on their worktable, in orderto gaze at them frequently to relieve eye fatigue.Pliny may not have beenfar wrong.Scientifically, it s been shown that green is more soothing to thehuman eye than any other color.The notion that emeralds are as soothing asoil also led many sailors to take one as a special talisman to calm the seas andbring good luck to their ventures.This practice also has its roots in the storythat emeralds were good for those on a journey.Pliny was a contemporary of the Emperor Nero (10 bce 54 ce).Plinywas smart enough to retire from most public life soon after Nero s accession,realizing that Nero was not only mad and dangerous, but also rather stupid,preferring dancing girls to serious scholarship.However, perhaps Nero read upon Pliny s emerald pronouncements.It is said that the wicked emperor usedto wear a clear, hollowed-out emerald monocle in order to  cool his eyes as he58 From Satan s Crown to the Holy Grailwas watching the gladiator  games at the Coliseum, perhaps using them assunglasses.He is also said to have used the emerald eyeglasses to help him readhis documents, as he was rumored to be shortsighted.He certainly had an uglysquint which did nothing to enhance his already rather marginal appearance.Unfortunately, the whole Nero s eyeglasses story is suspicious.The inclu-sions characteristic of emeralds would have made it impossible for Nero toobtain a large stone clear enough to make spectacles.If the story is true at all,he was probably using pale aquamarine or perhaps even colorless beryl.Somesuggest Nero actually wore emerald-studded glass spectacles.These wouldn thelp his eyesight, but might have improved his looks.In either case, if these were real emeralds he probably got them from thefabled Cleopatra s mines in Egypt [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]