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Sardonyx

Sardius, Sard Page of 453 Sardonyx Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
302                                      SARDONYX.
This name is of later date than Theophrastus, by whom it was included (if indeed then known) amongst the varieties of the ονογιον. It is defined by Pliny as originally signifying a white mark in a Sard, (candor in Sarda) like the human nail placed upon flesh, and both of them transparent. Such were the true Indian sort, according to Ismenias, Demostratus, Zenothemis, and Sotacus. The two last writers call the opaque stones of this class "The Blind" Sardonyx; to such in Pliny's age was the name exclusively confined (quae nunc abstulere nomen). The Arabian kind exhibited no traces of the Sard (i. e. of a transparent red layer), and admitted of a variety of colours ;, the base (ra­diée), black or verging on blue ; the surface (ungue), like ver­milion, encircled by (redimitum) an opaque, fatty, white layer (intermediate), and passing into the white with a slight tinge of purple (or blue). And more tersely Solinus : " In the Arabian Sardonyx the surface is admired if of a purer red ; but found fault with, if of a dirty tint : the middle is girt by an opaque white line. The best is where neither layer diffuses its colour upon its neighbour, nor borrows anything from the other; the last (the base) finishes off with black. For any part to be transparent is reckoned a defect ; complete opacity increases its beauty " (55).
Three colours were now considered essential to the idea of a Sardonyx, hence termed by Lucian ψήφος των τριχρώμων èpv-θρα 67Γί7Γθλήΐ, as appears also from what Pliny says as to the manner of forging them (xxxvii. 75) : " Sardonyx gems are made up out of three stones cemented together so neatly that the fraud cannot be discovered, by selecting one a black, another a white, the third a red, each one the best of its respective kind.
Sardius, Sard Page of 453 Sardonyx
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