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Onyx, Nicolo

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ONYX.
261
with shades of the purest black, white, and blue, forming spots and meanders fully verifying Pliny's expression, " colore inen-naribili et in unum redeunte concentum suavitate grata." But in fact the Agate and the Onyx are the same substance, only differing in the arrangement of the layers, which in the Agate are wavy and often concentric, whilst in the Onyx they are placed parallel to each other.
Agathe-onyx is the name appropriately given by the French to that variety in which the upper layer is opaque and white, the lower transparent, and either colourless or a pale-yellow. This is the material most frequently employed for modern camei, being the production of Europe, and often termed the German Onyx, whereas the ancients preferred almost exclusively for that purpose the opaque and rich-coloured strata of the Indian Sard- . onyx. Eeversing the rule of modern camei, in the antique the re­lief is usually in opaque white upon a black ground. There is also a substance closely resembling the Agathe-onyx in appearance, though much softer when tested by the file, and often to be met with employed in Italian camei of the Eenaissance, the Albâtre-onyx of the French. This is but a variety of the Oriental Ala­baster, with the difference that the opaque and the transparent layers, instead of intermingling in circles and curls, are arranged in well-defined horizontal layers. The Italians have also skil­fully forged the antique Onyx by cutting out a relief in the white lava, so much used for Neapolitan ornaments, and fusing this down by means of an enamel upon a ground of brown Agate : a deception extremely difficult to detect. Bruckmann mentions a singular variety in his own cabinet ; an antique cameo, where the upper layer was calcareous, effervescing with acid, the lower a pure transparent quartz.
The most important works of the ancients remaining to us in Onyx, are their vases of different forms, which have ever been prized as the chiefest ornament of imperial and royal treasuries ; enjoying, if possible, a higher estimation in mediaeval times than amongst their original possessors. The earliest notice extant of Onyx vases occurs in Appian (Bell.'Mith. 115), where he enume­rates amongst the treasures of Mithridates captured at Talaura, 2000 vessels of Onyx (Χίθου ονυχιτίδος), that is, of the gem not
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