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Onyx, Nicolo

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ONYX.
259
One passage, however, aided by tradition, will afford a clue for tracing the exact meaning of the name amongst the Romans, at least as far as regards the Arabian species. For this is described by Sotacus as differing from the others, in being black with zones of opaque white, whereas the Indian exhibited fiery spots encircled by transparent zones, either one or many around each, but differing from the same in the Indian Sardonyx : for in the former these spots are a shade (momentum), in the latter an actual circle. The only conclusion to be drawn from this observa­tion is (with Kohler) that Sotacus called the irregularly stratified stone (our Agate) the Onyx, the regularly stratified the Sardonyx. Now the ring-stone most in favour with the Romans, next to the fiery Sard, if we may judge from the number remaining, and the good intagli they generally bear, is a stone of two horizontal layers, the lowest of them black sometimes opaque, but often red by transmitted light, covered by another extremely thin (Pliny's momentum) of milky-white, which from the reflexion of the dark ground underneath, often shows like a turquois-blue. This ar­rangement of colours was procured by cutting out one of the " eyes " above mentioned, together with its encircling zone, and thus carefully reducing it to the form best calculated to preserve the exact distribution of the two shades, by sloping off the sides but leaving the surface perfectly plane. The popular name for such a gem amongst the Romans was AEgyptitta, allusive to its origin, or rather the place of exportation : " Nomen a loco : vulgus in nigra radice caerulea facie." But the older definition quoted from Sacchus shows the name originally designated the Sardonyx cut across the layers, for the stone was distinguished by veins (bands) of Sard and black passing across a transparent white ground, " per album sardœ nigrœque venis transeuntibus " (xxxvii. 54). Kohler supposes, with good reason, that this two-coloured gem is Pliny's Arabian Sardonyx, " which retained no trace of the Sard," for if the third and uppermost layer of the Sardonyx be removed, the remaining two will give us the very stone in question.
This is the Nicolo of the Italians, a corruption of Onicolo, a little Onyx, still called by the Germans Onykel : a traditionary name affording in itself a strong testimony that this was anciently
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