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NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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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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