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Crystallus, Rock-crystal

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CRYSTALLUS.
175
mouldings and gadroons, much after the manner of the modern cut-glass, or, if engraved with designs, these were always in intaglio, the " crystallum inpunctum " of Apuleius. For to all ancient designs in relievo, a contrast of colours was a necessity, to supply a ground for the figures, which would have been lost upon a substance of one transparent, colourless body. Another advantage Pliny notices drawn by the artists from this mode of ornamentation ; the sunken work enabled them to cut out or disguise the flaws, and red patches disfiguring the substance.
Many of these vessels were of extraordinary dimensions, though Pliny shelters himself under the authority of Xenocrates for quoting one as large as an amphora (a cubic foot), and another, from India, holding four sextarii (two quarts). But Mohammed Ben Mansur boldly adduces Teifashi telling of a merchant in Mauritania who possessed a basin made out of two pieces of Crystal so large that four men could sit in it at once ; and with somewhat more probability, that in the treasury at Ghasna (when captured, a.d. 1159) were found four Crystal vases, each of which would hold two skins of water.
That these vases were partly exported from India ready manu­factured, partly carved into more graceful forms at Alexandria (the sole channel through which Indian productions flowed into Europe), appears from the passage in Martial (xii. 74) mention­ing Crystal vessels as brought to Ostia by the corn-fleet of the
Kile :—
" Dum tibi Niliacus portât Crystalla cataplus."
There is a great similarity in the elegant designs of arabesque foliage covering these bowls with that seen on the cameo-vases in glass of known Alexandrian fabrique, such as the elegant amphora of the Museo Borbonico, surrounded with a network of vine-branches. Thus Achilles Tatius (ii. 3) has " a crater (deep vase), the entire work carved out of one fossil Crystal (in contradistinc­tion to glass), which vine-branches encompass like a garland."
Under the Lower Empire Crystal seems to have been much in use for making solid finger-rings, carved out of one single piece, the face engraved with some intaglio serving for a signet. All those known to me have the shank moulded into a twisted cable; one example bore for device the Christian monogram,
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