|
254
|
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
|
|||
|
|
|||