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NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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one
quality, but some are softer and paler, and not very brilliant, nor yet
very deficient in lustre. Others are like rock-crystal : another kind,
somewhat opaque, has lines in the middle ; another, called the
' ancient,' is like snow, or froth of the sea : this last is said by
magicians to be feared by the beasts of the field, and by spectres."
And Psellus so closely follows him in his definition of the Jaspis,
that he must be copying the same original.
Another of Pliny's subdivisions is that " starred with red spots." This is not the
Heliotrope (which he describes accurately enough in another place), but
a white Calcedony full of minute sanguine dots, now entitled " St.
Stephen's Stone," and formerly held in high veneration, as thus dyed
ever since its employment in his martyrdom. Pliny adds this in at the
end of the article amongst a lot of what evidently are common
Calcedonies, without colour, one containing a cloud,* another tipped
with snow, a third like salt, a fourth smoke-stained, &c. And as a
conclusive proof that he is talking of the common Calcedony, and of
nothing more precious, he mentions having seen one fifteen inches high
and carved into a statuette of Nero, in armour.
His
" onychi juncta quae Jasp-onyx vocatur," is indicated by the very
composition of the name as that extremely rare Onyx, in which a true
opaque red Jasper is superimposed upon a Plasma, to use the modem
terms. In such a material was engraved the wonderful Corinthian Helmet,
the glory of the (old) Poniatowsky Cabinet ; and Winckelmann
parÂticularly notices it as employed for the best works in that style
in Stosch's : a proof of its ancient high estimation.
Pliny speaks of the Jaspis " as still retaining the glory it
*
There is a specimen of this "Jaspis nubem complexa" in the Marlborough
Cabinet; a clear Calcedony containing a white opaque spot. The stone is
cut info a spheroidal form, and set in a ring ; evidently from the
place it holds being once considered a prodigy of Nature.
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