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Sardonyx

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SARDONYX.
309
might, such substances have been a mystery to the Greeks in the reign of Alexander. The use of the Sardonyx was first made fashionable at Rome by Scipio Africanus the Elder ; the favourite gems of the Emperor Claudius were the Sardonyx and the Emerald. Such a predilection may well account for the existence of so many cameo portraits of this prince and the members of his family in the former material.
A perfect Oriental Sardonyx is still required to exhibit the same characters as when Pliny defined them. The base must be black (in reality a translucent chocolate colour when held against the sun) the middle zone opaque fatty white, the surface a light brown or red. It is, perhaps, now more valuable when of a certain size (the source being lost) than in Roman times ; one as large as a crown piece selling for 30 l. on the Continent. The famous collection of Baron Roger has two specimens of un­paralleled magnitude and beauty, being circular disks three inches in diameter, the strata perfectly even, valued at 1000t. each. But that even under the Empire it was a stone of price, appears from the provision in Ulpian (De Bon. Damnât.), from a law of Hadrian's, which excepts the contingency of the cri­minal's having on his finger a Sardonyx or other precious stone exceeding the value of 5 aurei (5 l.). The finest specimen, however, of the kind is the "great Sardonyx" of the Green Vaults, Dresden, a vast disk (not engraved) mounted as a pen­dant, with two smaller but still magnificent fellows of the same quality hanging from it.
In the Temple of Concord there was shown the supposed (" si credimus ") gem of the celebrated ring of Polycrates : a Sard­onyx, not engraved (intacta, illibata), set in a golden cornucopia (held by the goddess), the gift of Augustus, where it occupied almost the last place amongst a crowd of other gems, all deemed of superior value. It is difficult to explain how this legend came to be affixed to this particular Sardonyx : for Herodotus expressly calls the signet in question " an Emerald the work of Theodorus the Samian ; " Clemens Alexandrinus adding that the device upon it was a lyre. And Pausanias has (viii. 4) : "A work of Theodorus was also that signet upon an Emerald which the tyrant Polycrates chiefly wore, and upon which he prided
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