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Murrhina, China-Agate

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MURRHINA.
the best claim to be declared the true Murrhina. I have myself remarked all the changes noticed by Pliny, in a large Agate trulla, the colours being a partly transparent, partly opaque white, slightly opalescent, spotted with chocolate-brown, all going through the most singular changes as the light is allowed to pass through the sides at different angles. And what strongly supports this view is the fact of so many antique glass bowls and saucers being found both whole and in fragments, which are very exact imitations of darkly-clouded Agates : for Pliny expressly mentions (xxxvi. 66) amongst the varieties of coloured glass manufactured in his day, one counterfeiting the Murrhina. A conclusive proof this that the latter substance was not arti­ficial : indeed Pausanias, speaking of the water of the Styx (a most deadly and subtle poison), says (viii. 18) that it breaks to pieces glass, crystal, murrhina (μορρία), and all else made by man out of stone. Besides, owing to its common use for the most approved kind of drinking-vessel, it came to be designated absolutely as " Gemma," and the " potare gemma," so frequent in Martial, signifies this alone ; "gemmati calices," on the other hand, implying gold set with other gems.
Pliny, however, could not have been mistaken as to the real character of the substance ; for he states that Pompey brought it to Pome both in the rough and worked up into vases (lapides et pocula) ; which he dedicated to the Capitoline Jupiter. Now Appian records that 2000 vessels of the " gem Onychitis " formed part of the treasures of Mithridates captured at Talaura, which shows that the Greek Onychitis (not Onyx) was the same as the Roman Murrhina, for Pliny expressly says that it was their conquest of Mithridates that first set the Romans mad after gems and Murrhina.1 Inasmuch as the district producing the stone
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