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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Page of 384 Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
140
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
Plato has (Phaed. 210), "the stones admired by the Greeks —Sards, Jaspides, Emeralds"—apparently arranging them in the order of their value. But here another and an unex­pected difficulty presents itself : intagli of the Greek period are very rarely to be met with on the translucent green,* or cerulean Calcedonies, constituting properly the Jaspis of those times. The conclusion therefore cannot be resisted that the name was also given to those bright yellow stouts (now improperly termed " Amber Sards "), the favourite material with the Greek engravers, but which went entirely out of fashion under the Romans. Such a colour the Greeks termed ÷ëùñïß, equally with green ; for their ^avöos meant orange, being applied to hair which we call red. But, in fact, these " yellow Sards " (to keep to the modern ter­minology) often have a green tincture, and sometimes darken into olive, an intermediate shade linking them with the Plasma.
To the same class must be referred those clear brown Sards, distinguished in French as " Sardoines," on which much of the best work in the early styles is to be found. For this sort the Greeks had an appropriate name, " Cap-nias " or " Capnites "—the " Smoke-stone," for it has precisely the appearance of having been thus artificially tinged. The title "Sphragides" necessarily could only have been conferred upon a species used for sphragistic pur­poses to the almost entire exclusion of all the rest. The Greeks did not account them Sards, because red was the colour indispensable to the idea of a Sard; as indeed is expressed by its Persian original, sered. This explanation
* The only exceptions furnished by my experience are the remark­able plasma scarabeus of Dr. Bishop's (Naples), and a ringstone in the same, curiously mottled by a darker green, engraved with a good figure of Neptune resting on his trident like tho type of Posidonia, inclosed in an Etruscan border; an interesting gem for many reasons (Mr. Stowe, Oxford).
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