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Onyx, Nicolo

Obsidianum, Obsidian Page of 453 Onyx, Nicolo Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
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ONYX.
ONYX : Όνυχίον : ,Οννχίτηs;.
The name of Onyx was given by the Romans to two totally dis­tinct substances : a species of marble, and a silicious gem. Pliny states this (37, 24) : " hoc aliubi lapidis, hic gemmœ vocabuluin." As it would appear, from a circumstance hereafter to be noticed, that the marble was the first of the two to bo known under that name to the Romans, it is properly the first to be here considered. It was the carbonate of lime, now called Oriental alabaster, and received its appellation from the fancied resemblance of its clearly defined white and yellow veins to the shades in the human finger-nail (βννξ).
In the republican times of Borne this was a material of in­credible value and rarity, supposed to be peculiar to Arabia, and solely employed for making drinking-cups and the feet of couches. Cornelius Nepos recorded that two amphorae in this stone, as big as Chian wine-jars, exhibited by Lentulus Spinther, were looked upon as prodigies for magnitude, but so fashionable did it become, that only five years later he had himself seen columns 32 feet high in the same material. And Pliny notices (xxxvi. 12) that Balbus placed in his theatre four middling-sized columns of Onyx-marble, which were considered at the time an extraordinary ornament, whereas in the next generation he saw thirty, and larger ones too, in a single banqueting-hall built by Callistus, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius. Quarries of the stone had by that time been opened at Thebes in Egypt (whence in our times the late Pasha raised columns above forty feet long, which he presented to the fabric of S. I'aolo fuori le Mura, Rome), also at Damascus, but the finest quality came from Carmania. Being considered as especially adapted for the preservation of the
Obsidianum, Obsidian Page of 453 Onyx, Nicolo
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