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Smaragdus, Emerald

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324
SMARAGDUS.
jewelry, must be cut in two, as the only means of getting rid of the unsightly perforation : and thus one gem of unparalleled mag­nitude is necessarily reduced into a pair of only ordinary dimen­sions. Such has been the Indian custom from time immemorial, as appears from the description of Persine's necklaces, so poetic­ally described by Heliodorus (iEth. ii. 30) : " So saying, from a little pouch he wore under his arm-pit, he took out and showed me an astonishing lot of precious stones : for amongst them were pearls as big as a small hazel-nut, perfectly round, and of the most dazzling whiteness ; Emeralds likewise and Hyacinths ; the former green like a meadow in the spring, but illuminated with a certain oily lustre ; whilst the latter mimicked the colour of the shallow sea under the shadow of a precipitous rock, when it is slightly ruffled by the breeze, and casts a violet tinge upon the bottom." Tavernier notices that in his day every Hindoo that could afford it, wore in his ears a Ruby or an Emerald strung between two pearls. So composed appears the triple ear-drop seen in the portraits of the Sassanian queens, and which best explains the disputed meaning of the τρίτ/λ,ηνα, with which Homer (xiv. 183) adorns the ears of Juno.
In Pliny's age, such was the estimation in which the Emerald was held on account of its beauty and value, that, " by the com­mon consent of mankind, they were spared, being not allowed to be engraved." He quotes indeed from some early Greek author (xxxvii. 3) a story to illustrate the (professional) vanity of the musician Ismenias, in Alexander's reign, who, having heard of a smaragdus on sale in Cyprus, engraved with an Amymone, at the price of six gold pieces, sent for it ; and when his agent, having by chancering reduced the price to four, brought back the ring and the surplus, pretended to take offence at the insult offered the gem's dignity by this beating down of the price. But the locality, the age, and the trifling value of the stone, all go to prove that nothing more than a Prase is here understood by the term Smaragdus. Pliny's statement indeed is fully borne out by those rings that have come down to us intact from Roman times, which invariably present their Emeralds unengraved, and for the most part in their native irregular form, with but a slight polish given to the surface : of such, the Devonshire Collection contains
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