|
JASPIS.
|
207
|
||
|
|
|||
|
which,
shows the uncommon density of its particles. This has been used by the
Greeks for some of their finest intagli, inferior or Lower Empire work
never occurring in it. No description of such a stone is to be found in
Pliny's list, unless it be briefly noticed as the Antipatlies. The Greeks would probably have considered it a kind of άνθρακιον.
2.
The Eed : exactly the converse case of the preceding, no Greek intagli
exist in this, whilst Roman, especially those of the Middle Empire and
of the decline, abound, the best performances indeed of those times
being executed in it. The most celebrated intaglio in Eed Jasper is the
head of I'allas, with the name of the artist, Aspasius, at Vienna. The
earliest portrait in it that has been seen by me is one of Hadrian; the
subjects for which it is usually employed are, moreover, in the taste
of his age, chimeras or symbolical combinations, astrological figures,
and Bacchic masks and scenes. For the last, it was recommended by its
colour, vermilion being the paint with which it was usual to stain the
faces of the god of wine and his attendant satyrs. As this stone came
into fashion so long after Pliny's times, he has left no particular
description of it, though it seems to be intended by his Achates
vermilion-coloured, " which was said, if boiled in a pot with oil and
other drugs, to convert the whole mass within two hours to a vermilion
dye." l
Similarly Orpheus (609) terms one sort of the Achates μιλ,-τοπάρηος (vermilion-faced). It was not Pliny's Haemachates, for that Solinus
(xi.) describes as " blushing with spots of blood," and therefore our
opaque Bloodstone, as distinguished from the translucent Heliotrope.
Neither was it the stone Haematites (xxxvi. 25), for that was a
loadstone, and therefore the magnetic iron-ore still so called. It was
perhaps the Haamatitis of Theo-phrastus (37), classed by him amongst
the inferior gems, the Fossil Ivory, Prasitis, and Sapphirus, and which
he describes as dry, and composed as it were out of clotted blood,
having also a
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||