Amethystus, Amethyst

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	60	AMETHYSTUS.

	AMETHYSTUS: Άμέθυσος; 'Αμέθυστος: Amethyst.

	The Common Amethyst, and the stone generally designated amongst the ancients by this name, is nothing more than rock crystal coloured purple by manganese and iron, and hence is more properly termed in modern mineralogy Amethystine Quartz. It is therefore of an entirely distinct species from the true Oriental Amethyst, a most rare and valuable species of the Precious Corundum, being in fact a purple Sapphire, where the purple shows little of the red seen in the common Amethyst, but is rather an extremely deep shade of violet. The name of " Oriental " is however improperly applied by the English lapidaries to the Amethyst Quartz when very brilliant and of two shades of colour, the true 'gem of the name, from its rarity, being known to but a few among them. The name " Amethyst," though most probably a mere corruption of the Eastern name for the stone, a trace of which seems preserved in the Hebrew Achlamath,¹ was by the fanciful Greeks interpreted as though formed from their own language, from a and μεθυ " wineless," and thereupon the gem was invested by them with the virtue of acting as an antidote to the effects of wine.⁸ Hence the point of several epigrams in the Anthology, as that of Antipater (or Asclepiades) on the signet of Cleopatra, an Amethyst engraved with a figure of Μέθη, the genius of intoxication (ix. 752),³ and another (ix. 748).

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