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Sardonyx

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296
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
and then polished and cemented together ; not explaining, however, how the white and the red layers were produced. A sufficient answer to this hypothesis, is the circumstance that the strata in our camei often undulate, besides being of irregular thickness ; proof demonstrative that they were arranged by the hand of Nature as we now behold them.
The Romans, however, like their descendants of our day, imitated the Sardonyx by the fusing together three pieces of coloured opaque glass, so as to represent the natural strata, with surprising accuracy (Viteum Annulare). These, when worked oyer and polished like a gem, can only be detected by the test of the file. It is curious, however, to notice that the same idea as that propounded by Veltheirn with respect to the artificial origin of the Sardonyx appears to have prevailed in the days of Theo-phrastus ; at least this seems the natural interpretation of the passage (61): "Earthy minerals: these assume all kinds of colours by reason of the diversity of the subject-matter, and of the influences acting upon it ; of which, some they soften by fire, some they fuse and pound, and so put together those stones that are brought from Asia." Now it must be remembered that both the Murrhina (porce­lain Jasper) and the gemma, of which the huge draught­board (carried in Pompey's triumph) was made, were unknown in Rome before the conquest of Asia, nearly three centuries after the times of Theophrastus : well, therefore, might the true nature of similar substances have been a mystery to the Greeks in the reign of Alexander. The use of the Sardonyx, Pliny records, was first made fashionable at Rome by Scipio Africanus the Elder : the favourite gems of the Emperor Claudius were the Sardonyx and the Emerald. Such a predilection may well account for the existence of so many cameo portraits of this Caesar and the members of his family in the former material. These
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