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Onyx, Nicolo

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ONYX.
215
obtain two bands of dark brown, one lighter than the other, and separated by a middle zone purely colourless and transparent. This stone, it is evident, enjoyed the highest reputation for the purpose of signets, until shortly before the rise of the Roman Empire, when the brilliantly-coloured Indian Sard came into competition with and completely banished it from the fingers of the fashionable. As a proof of this, it may be safely asserted that not a single imperial portrait is known to exist in such a material. On the other hand, equally into request with the Romans as the all-prevailing Sard came the yet more recent Nicolo, a gem completely unknown to the Greek engravers, as Caylus has long ago observed, and the experience of all gem collectors will confirm his observation.
Isidorus of Seville has noted that the old Latin name for a signet was ungulus; for which he offers the far-fetched explanation that it was so called " because the gem covers the ring in the same manner as the nail covers the finger-end." But there can be no doubt that ungulus was merely the literal translation of the Greek ïíí÷éïí, its derivation from unguis exactly corresponding to that of the original from ïíõî. The Greeks used the diminutive to express that the native substance had been modified to the purposes oi art, according to a well-known rule of the language, oi which examples are ÷ñíóßïí, áñãýñùí, gold, and silver, when coined. For the Tricoloured Agate being the usual signet-stone of the Greco-Italians and Sicilians, the Romans, when they began to obtain and to value the works of these en­gravers, at the same time adopted and Latinised the current designation of the material.
This explanation also throws light upon the apparently unintelligible definition of the Onyx extracted by Pliny from that very ancient mineralogist Sotacus, that "it ex­hibited the colours of the human nail, and also of the chry-
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