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Onyx, Nicolo

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ONYX.
255
unguenta or perfumed oils, then so much in use, it was worked up into the little vases called alabastra (or " without handles "), and hence becoming known as the alabastrites or "unguent-jar stone," lost its original designation, which thenceforward came to be confined to the gem, now to be discussed.
The first mention of the Onyx as a precious stone occurs in the inscriptions of the Parthenon, dating from the Peloponnesian War (b.c. 431-404), where amongst the offerings is registered " a large Onyx engraved with an antelope ; weight 33 drachms." Theophrastus ('On Stones,' 31) uses the diminutive ονύχιον, in­dicative of its value, and also perhaps to distinguish it from the marble Onyx ; and describes it as made up of white and dark-brown (φαίω) in alternate layers. This ovvyiov of Theophrastus and the early Greeks was not the stone known to the Romans and to us as the Onyx, or Nicolo, the Italian corruption of Oniculus, but the gem upon which the best archaic and Etruscan intagli for the most part occur, and which is now usually called the tricoloured or banded Agate. This appears from the description above quoted from Theophrastus. His definition of one of its shades as φαΐος is the very epithet Homer frequently applies to spring-water, and therefore can only signify something blackish and at the same time translucent, the actual appearance presented by water deep and clear. Totally inapplicable are these terms to the Onyx of the" Romans, our Nicolo (oniculus), where the layers are opaque, and usually of vivid colours, blue upon black ; but they exactly describe the stone usually but improperly called by dactyliographers the " Tricoloured, or Banded, Agate," that so favourite material for the early Greek glyptic art, and which those lapidaries invariably cut across the strata so as to obtain two bands of dark brown, one lighter than the other, and separated by one in the middle purely colourless and transparent. This stone it is evident enjoyed the highest reputation for the purpose of signets, until shortly before the rise of the Roman Empire, when the brilliantly coloured Indian Sard completely banished it from the fingers of the fashionable. As a proof of this, it may be safely asserted that not a single imperial portrait is known to exist in such a material. Equally into request with the Romans as the Sard came the Nicolo ; a stone completely unknown to the Greek
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