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Murrhina, China-Agate

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MURRHINA.
185
(e gemmis duabus), a magnitude never afterwards to be obtained, or anything like it. For the size of the pieces in Pliny's days was never beyond that required for a small dish, and the trulla, especially particularised as the usual form of vessels in this substance, exactly resembled both in size and shape a modern breakfast-saucer. In spite of their high price, these vessels were accumulated in prodigious quantities by wealthy amateurs. Those belonging to a single noble—(Annius, once Consul), notorious for having paid 70 sestertia (700Z.) for one cup, " which certainly," remarks our author, " did hold three sextarii " (pints)— being confiscated by Nero upon the owner's death, were sufficient when set out for public exhibition to fill a theatre of considerable extent situated in the palace-gardens. Amongst these Pliny beheld the fragments of one bowl (scyphus) of unprecedented rarity, which, " to make the world lament, and to cast odium upon Fortune for her malice in breaking it," the imperial connoisseur decreed should be preserved in a case, and thus exhibited, like the corpse of Alexander the Great. The celebrated Petronius could boast of a single trulla valued at 300 sestertia (3000?.), which immediately before his suicide he smashed to pieces, in order, as Pliny quaintly expresses it, to disinherit Nero's table, and disappoint his expectations of so incomparable an ornament. " But the Emperor, as became his rank, outdid all by paying above thrice that amount * for a capis.^ A memorable thing that an emperor and a ' Father of his country ' should have drunk so dear ! " The fragments above mentioned as still occurring amongst antique debris
* Decies H. S. 10,000?. Our amateurs have not yet come up to this, the 1600?. paid by the Marquis of Hertford for the Bernai Rose-du-Barry Sevres vase being their highest flight.
f The capis was a tall, slender jug : those in metal still preserved being as a rule 12 inches high, it may be concluded that this crowning glory of the Neronian beauffet attained to the same dimensions.
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