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Smaragdus, Emerald

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SMARAGDUS.
" gems green as a meadow in the spring, bat illuminated with a certain oily lustre ;" or the rhetoricians' (Syminachus, Mai) de­scription of them in the jewels of the Imperial bride, as " playing with a quivering green " (so distinctive a character of the true stone) ; can any one longer doubt that the Romans were ac­quainted with the true Emerald, or suppose that they could have applied such terms of praise to the dull Plasma or opaque Mala­chite, which so many archaeologists have contended were alone understood by the name Smaragdus ?
It cannot, however, be denied that the SμάραηΒος of the earlier Greeks signified any kind of green stone that was brighter and more transparent than their Jaspis (our Plasma). In no other way is it possible to understand Theophrastus (23) : " Of
stones used for signets, some for the sake of their beauty......
the Smaragdus possesses also some peculiar properties, for it assimilates the colour of water into which it is thrown to its own colour—the stone of middling quality tinging a smaller quantity ; the best sort all the water ; whilst the worst only colours the liquid directly over and opposite to itself." (Meaning that it will give a greenish cast to the water by the reflection of its own colour, not by staining the liquid as most people absurdly understand the passage. But this test is not now to be confirmed by experiment.) " It is also good for the eyes : on which account people wear ring-stones made of it, for the sake of looking at them. But it is rare and small in size, unless we choose to believe the stories about the Egyptian kings ; for some assert that one was brought to them, amongst other presents from the king of Babylon, four cubits in length by three wide : and that there are now standing dedicated in the temple of Jupiter four obelisks made out of Emerald, forty cubits long, and four cubits wide on one side and three on the other. But these accounts rest merely upon the testimony of their own writers. Of the sort called by many the Bactrian (or Tanos) that at Tyre is the largest, for there is a column of tolerable size in the temple of Hercules there : unless indeed it be the spurious Emerald, for there is such a kind found. This last exists in localities easily acces­sible and well known—in Cyprus in the copper-mines there, and in the island lying over against Chalcedon. In the latter
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