Roman Jewelers And Lapidaries

(via Roman Book On Precious Stones: 1950) Sydney H Ball writes:

In Pliny’s time, the jewelry trade was a thoroughly integrated industry, including traders, explorers like the equestrian sent northward in search of amber—the Jean Baptiste Tavernier of his time, brokers in precious stones, makers of false stones, lapidaries and gem engravers, setters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, and retail merchants.

In the Chou period (1000 B.C), the Chinese nobles despised trade and regarded merchants with contempt. The Greeks also disdained the tradesman, holding that haggling over profits made poor citizens. Cato (234-149 B.C), the Roman patriot, in the introduction to his treatise on agriculture, states that farming ‘makes the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers.’ Trade may be more profitable than farming, but it is much more hazardous. However, ‘I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and studious of gain: but it is a career that leads to danger adn ruin.’ Cicero says of a tradesmen ‘they make no profit except by a certain amount of falsehood’ although business on a large scale, provided it was honorably conducted, ‘is not so very discreditable’ especially if after he has made his fortune the merchant retires and becomes a gentleman farmer. In the time of Augustus, similarly, the merchant, particularly the retailer, was held more or less in contempt by the Romans. In consequence, many of the merchants in Pliny’s time were not Romans but Greeks, and in his opinion also merchandising, the invention of the Phoenicians, was much less respectable than agriculture. Indeed, in his day, farming was the only respectable business.

Dionysius Periegetes, of about Pliny’s time, in his geographical poem, in which we find many references to gem occurrences, states that he is no merchant nor has he sailed the Indian Ocean ‘like the many who stake their lives for vast wealth.’

Saint John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D) expressed himself as follows: ‘Whoever buys a thing in order to make a profit selling it, whole and unchanged, is the trader who is cast out of God’s Temple.’ In the 14th century the merchant was scarcely to be distinguished from the pirate. Nietzche (1884-1900 A.D) says his morality was merely the refinement of that of a pirate.

Pliny, as we have said, did not highly regard those of the jewelry trade, and he evidently considered them a tricky crew. He emphasized their unwillingness to permit their clients to satisfy themselves of the genuineness of the wares offered. We, further, find the morals of the trade not high, for in the reign of that pervert Heliogabalus, Valerianus Vetus was executed for having designed and made small gold images, worn as ornaments by the ladies of pleasure. But there were exceptions for, dating from the days of Julius Caesar, there is an epitaph of a jeweler on the Via Sacra, perhaps written by relatives, which concludes: ‘He was compassionate and loved the poor,’ an eulogy many of us might covet.

Most authorities ascribe the motive of Lucius Piso, Governor of Further Spain, as recounted by Cicero, to his desire to be above all suspicion of dishonesty. I am rather inclined to ascribe it to his lack of faith in the uprightness of the artisan concerned. In going through his military exercises, he broke his ring—it probably being hollow and of fine, hence soft, gold. The governor summoned a goldsmith to his tribunal in the open forum of Corduba (Cordova), gave him the ring, weighed out the extra gold required for the job, and had the ring repaired in full view of the local populace. In Plutarch’s Essay, he speaks of the ‘impertinent labor of the goldsmith.’ In the Menaechmi, a comedy by Plautus (died 184 B.C), one of the women asks that her bracelet be taken to the goldsmith’s, that an ounce of gold be added to it, and that it be fashioned anew. Today, the wealthy Hindu, to protect himself, follows the procedure of Piso, for in India, likewise, the goldsmith is held in little esteem.

Theophrastus, writing about 315 B.C, mentions those stones which are cut as gems, some being so hard they cannot be cut with iron ‘but only by other stones’. Some sort of a lathe was even the used by lapidaries, as certain of the gems of that time have been shaped by the turner’s instruments. The carbuncle, emerald, and other stones, notably the stone from the ‘gold mines of Lampsacus used as a seal by the King’ (of Persia) were engraved as signets. Cutting the lapis lyncurius (tourmaline?) was difficult and workmanship was needed to bring out the luster of the emerald ‘for originally it is not so bright.’

Roman Jewelers And Lapidaries (continued)