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Achates, Agate

Introduction Page of 453 Achates, Agate Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
ACHATES.
15
ACHATES: 'Αχάτης: Agate.
Theophrastus, in his list of gems used for signets (31), says : " A handsome stone too is the Agate brought from the river Achates (Drillo) in Sicily, and is sold for a high price." But Pliny (xxxvii. 54) observes: " The Agate was formerly in great esti­mation, now in none at all. Found at first in Sicily on the banks of a river of the same name, but afterwards in a great number of places, exceeding in size, and fruitful in varieties."
The stone meant by Theophrastus had evidently, from the terms he uses, but one sort, but was not the gem now known to anti­quaries as the Tricolor Agate, because formed of parallel bands of brown, transparent white, and opaque or nearly opaque black : each band sharply defined and in strong contrast to its neigh­bour : this being his ονύγιον, q. v. On such a stone, after the Sard, are found all the best intagli of the early Greek and the Etruscan schools, but hardly ever any works in the peculiar style of Imperial Rome.
The " Agate " in modern mineralogy is an impure variety of Calcedony, presenting the most brilliant and varied colours ar­ranged in opaque wavy lines around a crystalline centre, and on a translucent ground; thus distinguished from Jasper, which, though of much the same nature, is always opaque and contains a larger proportion of iron.1 But the Achates of the Romans compre­hended a much larger variety of stones : besides that still known by the name, it embraced the inferior coloured quartz gems, the
Introduction Page of 453 Achates, Agate
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