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Murrhina, China-Agate

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MURRHINA.
241
was within the dominions of this king, it was to be expected he should have engrossed the finest specimens of the worked-up mineral. Immediately after this it came into general use in Borne for dishes, or rather plates for food (abaci escarii), a form for which it was best suited in consequence of the thinness of the layers. Pieces, however, were obtained of extraordinary super­ficial dimensions, for among the rarities displayed in Pompey's triumphal procession was a draught-board, four feet long by three wide, formed out of only two slabs (e gemmis duabus), a magni­tude never afterwards to bo obtained, or anything like it. For the size of the pieces in Pliny's days was never beyond that required for a small dish, and the trulla especially particularised as the usual form of vessels in this substance exactly resembled both in size and shape a modern breakfast-saucer. In spite of their high price, these vessels were accumulated in vast quan­tities by wealthy amateurs. Those belonging to a single noble— (Annius, once Consul), notorious for having paid 70 sestertia (TOOL) for one cup, which certainly, remarks Pliny, did hold three sextarii (pints)—being confiscated by Nero upon the owner's death, were sufficient when set out for public exhibition to fill a theatre of considerable extent situated in the palace-gardens. Amongst these were the fragments of one bowl (scy-phus) of unprecedented rarity, which, to make the world lament, and to cast odium upon Fortune for her malice in breaking it, the imperial connoisseur decreed should be preserved in a case, and thus exhibited, like the corpse of Alexander the Great. But the celebrated Petronius could boast of a single trulla valued at 300 sestertia (3000Z.), which immediately before his suicide he smashed to pieces, in order, as Pliny quaintly expresses it, to disinherit Nero's table, and disappoint his expectations of so in­comparable an ornament. "But the Emperor, as became his rank, outdid all by paying thrice that amount for a capis (a much smaller vessel). A memorable thing that an emperor, and a ' Father of his country ' should have drunk so dear ! " But the fragments above mentioned as still occurring amongst antique débris in­dicate bowls of such incredible diameter as will account for the vast sums paid by enthusiastic collectors for rarities in this class. I must venture hero to differ from Winckelmann, who
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