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Adamas, Diamond

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ADAMAS.
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By this name the earliest Grecian writers did not understand a precious stone, but rather some metal of invincible hardness such as steel, when compared to the more ancient instruments of bronze. Such must have been the " adamantine chains " in which-' AEschylus pictures his Prometheus bound, the legend about his iron finger-ring, memorial of his torture, sufficiently attesting what had been the material of these bonds. In process of time, as the sphere of the arts widened, this epithet seems to have been applied to certain gems more refractory to the engraver than the Sards and Agates generally worked upon by him. Theo-phrastus does not include the Adamas in his list of gems, and only once incidentally alludes to it (19) as an incombustible sub­stance ; probably a stone, since the passage treats of the various sorts of the Anthrax. The first indisputable mention of the Adamas as the true Diamond, containing its most striking cha­racters, minute size, and enormous value, is met with in Manilius (iv. 926)—
" Sic Adamas, punctum lapidis, pretiosior auro."
And this poet flourished in the latter part of the Augustan age. All this fully bears out Pliny's assertion that the Adamas, " bearing the highest value not merely amongst gems, but amongst all human possessions, was long known to none but kings, and to but a very few of them." Indeed it could not have been known at all in Europe before a direct intercourse with the nations of Southern India had been brought about by the esta­blishment of a Macedonian kingdom in Bactria. Certain it is that Theophrastus could not by mere oversight have omitted it from his list of gems, if known to his contemporaries, for the
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Achates, Agate Page of 453 Adamas, Diamond
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King. Natural History of Precious Stones.
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