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Topazius, Peridot

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TOPAZIUS.
313
sembling glass, and presenting a wonderful golden appear­ance. No one was suffered to land there under pain of death, and no boat was allowed to be kept on the island. Provisions for the few soldiers on guard there were brought at intervals from the continent. The gem was not dis­cernible by day, its lustre being then overpowered by the sun's rays, but at night made itself conspicuous by its brightness ; the guards, who divided the island among their patrols, then ran up and covered the luminous spot with a vase of equal size. Next day they went their rounds, and cut out the patch of rock thus indicated, and delivered it to the proper persons to be polished.
This stone was indubitably our Chrysolite (Peridot) ; the distinctive characters of which exactly agree with those pointed out by Pliny. His Topazius was imported from some place in the Red Sea ; at present the Peridot comes from the Levant, but from an unknown source : it was of a bright yellowish-green, a colour peculiar to itself (in suo virens genere), and was the softest of all the precious stones, yielding to the file, and suffering abrasion from wear. Juba adds that it was found in masses of such magnitude as to serve for a statue, four cubits high, of Arsinoe, queen of Ptolemy Philadelphus, standing in the " Golden Temple : " an exaggerated story, like those noticed under " Emerald," relating most probably to some imita­tion in glass. It had first been introduced into Egypt in the time of her mother, Berenice I., by Philemon " the admiral," whom we may hence infer had discovered the mine during his expedition against the pirates above men­tioned. It was still highly valued in Pliny's age, though .somewhat fallen in estimation since the time of its first discovery, when it was " wonderfully admired " (mire placuisse), and preferred to all other gems.
Under the Romans it had recently been met with in the
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