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Achates, Agate

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ACHATES.
common Carnelian, the Calcedony, those now called Jaspers; for the ancient name Jaspis was properly restricted to the green and translucent variety, now known as the Plasma and the Heliotrope. How wide the signification of the term " Achates" in ancient times clearly appears from Orpheus (Αοθικα, 604), who calls it " the multiform, excellent Achates, invested with every colour: for numerous are the dyes of the Achates to be seen. In it you find, if you look, the glass-like Jasper, the blood-red Sard, and the sparkling Emerald. Amongst them, one of vermilion aspect, moreover a copper colour, and the hue of the summer apple : but best of all that, if you can find it, representing the tawny hide of the fierce lion, dappled all over with spots, red, white, dusky, and green " —evidently the Brocatella. These varieties are all distinguished by Pliny by compound names expressive of the particular shade or conformation of the subject matter. Thus the Jaspachates would be our opaque Green Jasper ; the Corachates the common Calcedony; the Sardachates, the common Carne­lian ; the Haemachates, the Eed Jasper (abundant in Sicily) ; the Leuchates,2 the white Carnelian ; the Dendrachates, " deco­rated with little trees," our Moss Agate. The Corallachates, " be­sprinkled with gold-dust like the Lapis-lazuli, called the Sacred Agates," is evidently our Aventurine-quartz of a semi-transparent red, filled with gold-like particles of mica. This, Pliny says, was found abundantly in Crete; at present the finest specimens come from Cape de Gatte in Spain. That, amongst these, our Ped Jasper was included, appears from the singular notion quoted by Pliny, " that the kind of a vermilion colour rendered athletes invincible; and that the test of it was, if, when boiled for two hours in a pot of oil together with other paints, it should convert the whole mass to its own red colour." The Agates brought from India were greatly admired as lusus naturae, " because they represented rivers, groves of trees, cattle, and even more defined
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