|
128 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
|
||
|
|
||
|
is
found in great plenty in the province Toltotepec, but the stones there
are small in size, and on account of their extreme abundance are but
little valued."
It
has been of late years ascertained that this curious mineral was known
to the ancient lapidaries both Oriental and Roman, and that, too, at
the very dawn of the Glyptic art. The skilfully-engraved Assyrian
cylinder assigned tu Sennacherib (in the British Museum) is described
as cut in Amazon-stone ; and certain camei, particularly a veiled head
of M. Aurelius (Praun), in a stone the character of which could not be
mistaken, have coine under my own observation. Lastly, the question is
set at rest by the fact recorded by Corsi, that in some excavations
carried on in the ruins of the villa of M. Vopiscus at Tivoli, by Lord
Northampton (1820), were discovered fragments of the pedestal either of
a statue or a column sculptured in the true Amazon-stone. These
fragments were covered with hieroglyphics ; a fact that, coupled with the necessary large dimensions of the mass, throws an unexpected light upon the nature of the monster Egyptian Smaragdi
quoted by Theophrastus, and removes their existence from the domain« of
fable. Corsi, indeed, goes on to identify this stone with Pliny's Chalcedonius, on
the score of the nacrous reflex that characterized the latter, but the
minttteness and fusibility of the crystals of the Chalcedonians are
insuperable objections to this theory.
The
above-quoted cylinder recalls to one's memory two gems both described
by Pliny as productions of Persia, and both seeming, from his brief
notice of their properties, to present in different points certain
analogies to those of the Amazon-stone. His first is the Tamos : "
in colour a disagreeable green, and which is foisted in amongst the
Smaragdi ; " and certainly the cameo above alluded to had so much the
appearance, that it was described in the
|
||
|
|
||