What happens if you put a pearl in vinegar

Pliny, Natural History IX. Indeed, Pliny criticizes all such ostentatious display, whether two or three pearls dangling from the ears of women so they could hear them rattle as they moved IX.

Once, at what was to have been a modest engagement party, Pliny actually met Lollia, who arrived wearing emeralds and pearls on her head, neck, ears, wrists, and fingers. They cost forty million sesterces and she carried the receipts to prove it. There were other critics of such pretension. And Tibullus Elegies , II. Caesar was said to have invaded Britain for the fresh-water pearls to be found there and "in comparing their size he sometimes weighed them with his own hand" Suetonius, XLVII.

Tacitus is more disdainful and considers British pearls to have "a cloudy and livid hue" Agricola XII. He also attempted to restrict the wearing of pearls, a symbol of wealth and prestige, only "to those of a designated position and age, and on set days" XLIII. An appropriate symbol of the goddess, the breastplate was intended to recall and surpass Pompey's earlier display.

In a position of honor next to the cult statue was placed a gilded statue of Cleopatra, herself Dio, LI. Venus also was honored in the Pantheon, so named "because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus" Dio, LI.

It was this statue that received the second of Cleopatra's pearls, which would have been lost had not Lucius Munatius Plancus, who judged the wager, intervened. The one that was destroyed was said to have been worth ten million sesterces a hundred thousand gold aurei or almost pounds of gold. Pliny tells an earlier story about the profligate son of the actor Aesopus, who had inherited twenty million sesterces from his father and once dissolved a valuable pearl simply to discover its taste.

When it proved "marvellously acceptable," pearls were given to each of his guests to do the same IX. Horace recalls the incident in his Satires II. In this recounting, the scion impetuously took a pearl worth a million sesterces from the ear of the notorious Caecilia Metella Celer with whom he had an affair and dissolved it in vinegar.

It could take from several minutes to hours to even days, and even then the pearl may still not be completely dissolved.

Pearls with softer nacre like freshwater pearls, would react faster to the solution while pearls with compact nacre layers like South Sea would take longer. With this in mind, we can assume that the Cleopatra story may not be exactly as legend states. Here are some likely alternatives:. But what we do know now is that pearls can melt in vinegar. One thing we can take from this story is that vinegar is an excellent way to tell if a pearl is real.

Either submerge the pearl in vinegar or place a drop of vinegar on the pearl and watch carefully. The experiment also dispelled one of the most common misconceptions regarding Cleopatra's cocktail: the idea that only a super-concentrated vinegar could destroy a pearl. Other experiments have shown that when both the pearl is crushed and the vinegar is boiled, the reaction takes less than 10 minutes.

But the outcome — pearl destroyed, money spent and cocktail consumed — is plausible," Jones concluded. Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar at Stanford University's Departments of Classics and History of Science who specializes in investigating the basis of many ancient myths, folklore and popular beliefs, agrees. We already know that this curious, intelligent queen carried out toxicological experiments," Mayor told Discovery News. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

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