338 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
glass
appears from many passages of the classics. Ovid has the " vitreus
miles," and Martial " vitreus latro." For these, as something grander,
Trimalchio substitutes gold and silver coins in the two colours marking
the sides :—
" Calculus ut gemino discolor hoste périt "—
his
dice being made of rock-crystal. Later, luxury progressing made the
men in precious stone, probably the Onyx, for Martial (xiv. 20) has—
" Insidiosorum si ludis hella latronum Gemmeus iste tibi miles et hostis erit."
" If thou the tricky game of tables play, Alike in gems soldier and foe survey." *
Whoever
desires to understand the real nature of this game, often erroneously
supposed to be chess, let him read (and make out if he can) the minute
account of a grand match played between the Emperor Zeno and the poet
Agathias, and immortalised in an epigram of the latter's (Anthol. ix.
482).
The
art of making Pastes was never lost ; it afforded too great facilities
to fraud of the most lucrative kind ("neque est ulla fraus vitae
lucrosior," says Pliny), ever to have fallen into disuse in the
jeweller's atelier.^ Pliny alludes
*
The famous chess-board presented to St. Louis by the Old Man of the
Mountain is of crystal, the pieces themselves in agate : the whole on a
gigantic scale worthy of its history. That very opposite to the
chivalrous saint, the Eighteenth of the name, commonly used this board,
until two of the pieces were stolen, when in disgust he deposited it in
the Museum (Hôtel de Cluny).
t
A remarkable instance, the groat Ruby of Charles the Bold, set in a
golden rose, found amongst the other spoils of Granson, has been
already quoted ('Precious Stones,' p. 232). Again in that very
interesting historical relic, the Darnley or Lennox jewel, supposed to
have been made in memory of Lennox, Regent of Scotland (murdered in
1572) for his widow Margaret Douglas, the large Sapphire in the centre
is unmis
