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Onyx, Nicolo

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ONYX.
223
used for Neapolitan ornaments, and fusing this down by means of an enamel upon a ground of brown Agate ; a deception extremely difficult to detect. Brückmann men­tions a singular variety of the Agathe-onyx in his own cabinet ; an antique cameo, where the upper layer was cal­careous, eflervescing with acid, the lower a pure transparent quartz.
The most important works of the ancients remaining to us in Onyx, are their vases of different forms, which have ever heen prized as the choicest ornament of imperial and royal treasuries : enjoying, if possible, a higher estimation in mediaeval times than amongst their original possessors. The earliest notice extant of Onyx vases occurs in Appian (Bell. Mith. 115), where he enumerates amongst the trea­sures of Mithridates captured at Talaura, 2000 vessels of Onyx (ëßèïõ üêõ÷éôéäï?), that is, of the gem, not marble, as the feminine gender of the noun proves (indicating according to the genius of the language, a precious stone), as well as the notice that these vases were in gold mountings. This seems to be the same collection with that which Posidonius describes as " Onyx bowls, found in nests, or sets, up to the capacity of two cotylae (nearly one pint)." Their com­paratively small dimensions also serve to prove that the precious Onyx, equally with the Agate Murrhina, is here intended, for in the alabaster so-called vases of the most gigantic measurement were easily procurable, as the splendid productions of the Volterra fabrique amply mani­fest in our own times. Epiphanius, as quoted above, speaks of the Oriental princesses as delighting in drinking-vessels cut out of the Onyx. The treasures of Mithridates came to him in part from the inheritance of his ancestor Darius Hystaspis, in part had been amassed by the Ptolemies, and recently given up to the Pontic king by the Coans, in whose safe keeping they had been deposited by Cleopatra
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