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Murrhina, China-Agate

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186
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
indicate bowls of such incredible diameter as will account for the outrageous " fancy prices " paid by enthusiastic collectors for rarities in this class.
I must venture here to differ from Winckelmann, who ('Pierres Gravées de Stosch,' p. 580) asserts his opinion that the Murrhine vases were the same as those cut out of the precious Sardonyx, in describing the portion of such a vase belonging to Card. Albani. But the two materials must not be thus confounded together, as a passage in Lam-pridius shows, recording as the extreme of licentious extra­vagance in Heliogabalus that he used both Murrhine and Onyx vases for the basest purposes, " in Murrhinis et Ony-chinis minxit : " whence it is evident that they were distinct substances. The distinction was undoubtedly this : the Onyx vases, carved in a stone of concentric layers, for the most part opaque and in strong contrast to each other, served as a medium for art, the surfaces of such vessels being always worked into cameo-designs. Such stones being usually more or less egg-shaped by nature, these vases, ala-bastra, carchesia, were deep in proportion to their width, and were infinitely more uncommon than the Murrhina, which are always mentioned as being not worth more than Crystal vessels. Thus Seneca (Ep. 123) talks of the wealthy having " mules to carry their vases of Crystal, Murrhine, and those engraved by the hands of famous artists ;" meaning by the last the ancient silver vases adorned with chasings.
The Murrhina, on the contrary, were, from the very nature of the stone, always broad and shallow, dishes or saucers, not valued as works of art, but simply on account of the material ; their price augmenting with incredible rapidity as their extent surpassed a certain limit. The best sort, no doubt, was that so minutely described by Pliny, of which the noble example in the British Museum is a perfect type, but all vases of Agate were afterwards
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