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Adamas, Diamond

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20                                          ADAMAS.
above-quoted passage from Pliny clearly proves that the Diamond, as soon as introduced to the knowledge of the ancients (for his "regibus" necessarily signifies Greek princes), took the same foremost place amongst precious stones that it has ever since maintained.
Pliny thus gives the ancient notion as to the nature of the Adamas (xxxvii. 15), " Ita appellator ami nodus,1 in metallis re-pertus perquam raro, comes auro, nee nisi in auro nasci vide-batur." Here he evidently alludes to the passage in Plato's ' Timaeus' (59, B), describing the origin of metals by infiltration
by us liquids in a state of flux, that from the finest and most homogeneous particles becoming the most condensed, a special kind distinguished by its shining and yellow colour, that most precious thing gold, after filtering through the pores of the rock, becomes condensed and solid ; whilst the germ of the gold, ex­cessively hardened and dark-coloured by reason of its density, has been termed the Adamas") The epithet μελανθεν, " dyed a dark blue," sufficiently indicates that Plato understood nothing more than our Sapphire by his Adamas, Theophrastus using the same word to designate the colour of the Occidental Turquois.
Some mineralogists have advanced the paradox that the Adamas of the Romans also was not the Diamond, but the Sapphire.8 A sufficient answer to this is, that such large Sapphires as the ancients frequently engraved (the signet of Constantius, for
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