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Chalcedonius, Calcedony

Chalcedonius, Calcedony Page of 384 Chalcedonius, Calcedony Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
84
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
variety was evidently classed by Pliny amongst the com­moner European Opals, which he distinguishes from the incredibly precious and true Indian species. The kind tinged with pale blue, now called the Sapphirine on account of its colour, seems to have been the Jaspis Aërizusa, i.e. of a colour tending towards the cerulean : this, adds Pliny, the Greeks term Boria, from its resemblance to the sky on an autumnal morning. An apt comparison, which exactly represents the paley-blue tint of a good Sapphirine. Mar-cellus Ernpiricus designates it the "cerulean Scythian Jaspis " in his prescription for the making of an amulet against the pleurisy. A third variety, found in large masses, was turbid, very opaque, and soapy, sometimes even of a dirty brown.* The two last species were abund­antly employed by the ancients of every period, but more especially by the Asiatics ; the Babylonian cylinders arc-frequently made of grey or brown Calcedony, and it is the material almost exclusively used for the large conical seals of the Sassanians. The most beautiful Persian cylinder known is in Sapphirine. It bears the usual type of the king fighting against a lion (the evil genius), a design which proves it to have been the royal signet that graced the wrist of some Artaxerxes or Darius of the later times of the Achsemenian dynasty. Scarabsei of Etruscan work, as well as good Greek and Roman intagli, frequently occur in this material, but engraved on the Sapphirine in pre­ference to any other sort ; and justly so, for it is an ex­tremely pretty substance, often approaching to the pale Sapphire in colour, though devoid of its brilliancy. Upon
* This again may be the chemnites of Theophrastus (6) exactly re­sembling ivory "in a coffin of which Darius, according to report, is buried." A beautiful opaque Calcedony (often forming one stratum in the true Indian Sardonyx), has the modern name of Cacholong, said to mean in the Cossack tongue "pebble of the river Cache," from whose bed the finest specimens are brought to Odessa,
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