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Chalcedonius, Calcedony

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86                     NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
the famous bust of Isis bearing the inscription in the Ethiopie characters (Turin), whose hair, twisted into two long ropes, is looped upon her breast by passing diagonally through a mask evidently formed of a gem, and again crossing below is confined by a ring, and the same a third time. It is still the fashion with the Greek women to string perforated coins upon their hair twisted into many strings. The most important of these relics are the Marlborough Medusa in pure lustrous Calcedony, in the grandest style, originally the central " decus et tutamen " of an emperor's breastplate, and the bust of Matidia, supported upon a pea-jock (typifying her deification), and three inches high ; a work of the highest merit in point of art, though the material is brownish and turbid. Such monuments afford another proof that this substance was included amongst Pliny's in­ferior Jaspis-gems : perhaps his Capnias, " stained as it were with smoke," for he goes on to mention a statuette of Nero in armour, 15 inches high, formed out of one piece ; and in no other substance do antique works in full relief occur of such magnitude as in Calcedony. Another very grand work, in three-quarters relief and of considerable dimen­sions, is a bust of Tiberius, in a style of the utmost perfec­tion, executed in an opaque species much like ivory; per­haps a real Cacholong or impure Opal * (Vienna). Amongst the Marlborough gems, No. 384, is a Cupid's Head in the most lustrous Girasol imaginable. It seems to have been
* In the Townley Coll., Brit. Mus., is a child's head, of considerable size, admirably carved out of this substance : the resemblance to ivory is most striking. It appears to be the stone described by Pliny (54) as the "Arabica, exactly like ivory, and would pass for it did not its hardness betray it. It is thought to protect the wearers against pains in the sinews (rheumatism)." This appears to be the same as the Thelycardios (68), " so charming by its opaque white colour the Persians (its native locality) that they give it the name of Mule (the King.)" (See page 84, for " Chernites.")
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