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Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying

Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying Page of 384 Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
156                    NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
to our 8-carat, so much employed in neck and guard chains, and called by the sellers fine : but the Romans disdained to give the title of " auruni " to the noble metal unless totally separated from all baser admixture. This true " Corinthian Brass " was only used for making dishes and drinking-vessels. The wealthy Spurinna, a friend of the younger Pliny's, boasted of a complete dinner service in this rare material. Pliny (xxxiv. 3) laughs at those dilet­tanti who gave that name to the metal of the old Greek statues they so eagerly collected; adding, that "they pretended to a knowledge in this matter merely to dis- ' tinguish themselves from other people, without in reality having any deeper understanding of it." * This he proves by showing (in bis catalogue of statuaries) that the great masters whose material these connoisseurs styled promiscu­ously " Corinthian," had flourished all of them some ages before the fall of Corinth (b.c. 147). For he accepts as true the account given of the accidental discovery of this alloy in consequence of a fire, during the sack of that city, having melted a number of works in the different metals that had been brought together (by the plunderers). Of the same tale Petronius makes his hero Trimalchio, the wealthy " snob," give a comical version : " But that you may not take me for a know-nothing, I understand quite well how the Corinthian Brass first came about. At the sack of Troy Hannibal, a cunning fellow and a big rogue, heaped up all the gold, silver, and bronze statues into one vast heap, and then set fire to it. The metals fused and
* Martial lets us know a curious test of the genuineness of the composition : his virtuoso
" Consuluit nares an olerent vasa Corinthum," and it is certain that the above-named admixture of the precious metals would go far to neutralize the peculiar nauseous smell of the baser one in the resultant.
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