Pliny the elder (or to give him his proper Roman name, Gaius Plinius Secundus) was born  into a wealthy family in about A.D. 23; and died in the disaster at Pompeii in A.D. 79.  Military and other government service occupied much of his life; and his travels to the corners of the empire in pursuit of his duties seem to have ignited his curiosity, arousing in him a passion to write.  While serving as commander of the Roman Navy of the Western Mediterranean his virtues led to his death at Pompeii.  He observed the cloud of ash over Pompeii and ordered a fast boat to take him there to investigate.  Once there, he saw the scope of the disaster and mounted an humanitarian mission.  Personally commanding the evacuation on the beach, he became a victim of the disaster.  Stoic that he was, he would not have mourned his own death. His magnum opus was his “Historia naturalis”; and though it might best be thought of as an encyclopedia, it is as much about the nature of man in his society as it is about natural history.  Critical of his sources, and amused by humanity, in his observations on human mortality he had to observe that a man who was reputed to have reached the age of 150 years had, at least, been a tax payer for that period of time. If ever there was a credible man, it was he; and this brings us to Book 37 of the “Historia naturalis”. In it Pliny, discussed precious stones, revealing both his sophistication as an observer and man. Accurately describing the octahedral shape of a diamond crystal, he also reported on its usefulness as a polishing and cutting agent; anticipating the Mohs scale of gem hardness by more than 1700 years, he rated gems in their hardness with diamond at the top.  He used a steel file scratch test to separate genuine gems from glass imitations, a skill that may have been developed when he was called upon to administer justice as procurator of Gallia Narbonensis,  Africa and  Hispania Terraconensis, as indeed, the frauds were there.  Writing with his usual worldly skepticism of “glass jewels in cheap rings”, its clear that first century swindlers were eager to bilk the credible by passing off their glass imitations as real (How does one say “Hey, Buddy! Have I got a deal for you!” in Latin?) Unsurprisingly, he observed, “There is no fraud which yields greater profit than that of counterfeiting gems.” – an observation as true today as it was then. A few years ago a woman brought us some gems from her brother’s estate for evaluation. He’d been stationed in Brazil for a couple of years during World War II and had, presumably, purchased them there. All, of course, were glass (the “emeralds” were particularly good frauds); and his story is not an unusual one. Over the last half century in the jewelry business I’ve seen dozens of “alexandrites” purchased in Mexico, Egypt and elsewhere across the globe – where alexandrites aren’t found – that were really synthetic spinels. Most were huge – anywhere from the size of a 1.25 carat diamond to the size of a 3 or 4 carat diamond – and all were cheaply set, the modern equivalents of Pliny’s “glass jewels in cheap rings”. One of the more interesting recent frauds was worthy of an ancient Roman swindler. The con-artist lightly painted the back of a diamond of somewhat undesirable color with a layer of pink nail polish; this made it resemble a rare and valuable pink diamond. The buyer submitted it to the Gemological Institute of America’s Lab for evaluation and quickly learned the bitter truth. Then there are “Caribbean Blue” diamonds – diamonds turned a light blue/green by exposure to radiation. They flooded cruise ship ports of call a few years ago; so I comparison shopped them while in St. Thomas. Time and again I asked if the color was natural; and time and again “jewelers” in Charlotte Amelia swore that it was. As a student of human nature, Pliny might have been amused at the crude fraud; but he would not have been amazed. Caveat emptor.

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