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Did Cleopatra dissolve a pearl in vinegar to win a bet with Mark Antony?

The story is Pliny the Elder’s (Natural History 9.58): she bet Antony she could spend ten million sesterces on one dinner, dropped a pearl earring into vinegar and drank it, and Lucius Plancus stopped her before the second. Scholars long called it fiction. In 2010 classicist Prudence Jones showed vinegar does dissolve pearl, though a whole one takes a day or more, so Pliny likely compressed the timing.

The receipts

1. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book 9, chapter 58, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University
2. Cleopatra pearl cocktail proven possible, NBC News

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