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106 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
opening.
In the same way the nozzle and hole for the wick are drawn out in a
sharp projection with the greatest elegance, and so united with the
Crystal that it appears all one piece naturally. The cover, too, is
equally well wrought The shape of the shell is like a large sea-shell,
encompassed all round with its points, which in this vessel are
polished and very smooth, the Crystal being so well worked.
There were also vases and different articles in Agate, with certain
little animals, eight in all. Amongst these, two very beautiful vases,
one like those glass ampullae made big and squat for holding oil or
such like liquids, so wrought, so elegant, so thin, that it is a marvel
to behold; the other, in the shape of those brass ladles with long
handles used in Rome for baling water out of cisterns, and supposed to
have been a vessel used in sacrifice by the ancients."
These
Crystal vases were either embellished with raised mouldings and
gadroons, much after the manner of the modern cut-glass, or, if
engraved with foliage and figures, these were always in intaglio, the "crystallum impunctum" of Apuleius. For to all ancient ornamentation in relievo a
contrast of colours was a necessity, to supply a ground for the
figures, which would have been lost upon a substratum of one
transparent colourless body. Another advantage Pliny notices, drawn by
the artists from this mode of treatment—the incised work enabled them to cut out or disguise the flaws and red patches too frequently disfiguring the substance.
Many
of these vessels were of extraordinary dimensions, though Pliny
shelters himself under the authority of Xeno-crates for quoting one as
large as an arnphora (a cubic foot), and another, brought from India,
holding four sextarii (two quarts). The crowning glory of the
magnificent luxury of L. Verus, in Capitolinus' estimation, was the
possession of a Crystal bowl, called Volucer, after a favourite race-horse,
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