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BOOK VII
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153
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Lapis alabastrites (onyx marble) comes from the town of Alabastros in cither Phrygia or Thebes, whence the name. It is called onyx because
of its similarity to gem onyx. It is found in Cappadocia, Syria,
Carminia and India. The finest comes from Carminia, according to Pliny,
the second quality from India. A whiter variety comes from Damascus,
Syria, and the least valuable, \vhich is without luster, from
Cappadocia. The non-tranlucent honey-yellow variety with whorls or
specks is considered the finest. Imperfections are either horn-yellow,
white or glassy. There are two large columns in Rome in the chapel of
St. Agnes on the Numentana Way beyond Viminalis, two small columns
before a shrine near the bath house of Constantine near St. John
Lateran, and the columns in the Temple of St. Mark in Venice cut from
this stone. The material from Carminia is similar to this. Material of
gem quality occurs in masses the size of deposits of marble since
Cornelius Nepos relates that he had seen columns thirty-one feet long
made from it. Cornelius Balbus, after being freed by Claudius, placed
four small columns in his theater and Callistus had thirty amphoras in
his dining hall cut from this marble. Today the high altar of St.
Peter's in Rome has six onyx marble columns placed to the right and
left and four other columns in different places in the altar.
Some jaspis is
found in similarly large pieces, pieces of such size that large basins
can be cut from them, for example, the basin which is said to stand in
the arcade near St. Mary's, Ravenna. It is similar in color to the
jasper we mine in Misena. Smaragdus is sometimes found in large
pieces if, as Theophrastus writes, one can place faith in the
commentaries written about the Egyptian kings. It is written that a
piece of smaragdus was sent as a present to their king by a
king of Babylon which was six feet long, four and one-half feet wide.
It is also written that four pieces were placed in the obelisk of Jove
that had a total length of sixty feet and were six feet wide in one
place, three feet wide in another. Theophrastus writes that the largest
smaragdus has been seen by many people in Tyre where there was a
very large column in the temple of Hercules. Herodotus also mentions
this column but Theophrastus has doubts concerning this and did not
know if it were true smaragdus or not. Pliny writes that Apion
Plis-tonices has left a manuscript written a little before this in
which he mentions a colossal Serapis thirteen and one-half feet high
in the Egyptian labyrinth cut from smaragdus. Juba writes that the smaragdus they called cholas was
used to decorate buildings in Arabia. There may be some doubt as to the
truth of this statement since Juba has also written that a statue six
feet high of the wife of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus was cut from a topazius from the island of Arsinoe.8
Thus
we see, on one hand, marble cut into small pieces and made into gems
that are set in rings and on the other hand, gems that occur in large
masses substituted for marble. So much concerning the size of these gem
materials.
8 The name smaragdus is here given to various altered igneous rocks, principally serpentine.
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