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Ch. 9: Smaragdus, Emerald

Ch. 9: Smaragdus, Emerald Page of 377 Ch. 9: Smaragdus, Emerald Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
SMARAGDUS.
281
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 ( al. Tanos) that at Tyre is the largest, inasmuch as 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 place they obtain the more peculiar (choicer) specimens—for this species of gem is mined after like other metals—and it runs in veins in Cyprus quite by itself, and that too in great abundance. Few pieces, however, are met with of sufficient size for a signet-stone, most of them being too small, for which reason they use it in the soldering of gold, for it solders quite as well as the Chrysocolla (Silicious Malachite) ; and some even suspect both to be of the same nature, as they are certainly both exactly alike in colour. Chrysocolla, however, is found plentifully both in gold-mines, and still more so in copper-mines, as in those at Stobae. But the Emerald, on the contrary, is rare, as we have already observed ; and it appears to be generated from the Jasper,·]· for it is said that once there was found in Cyprus a stone
Ch. 9: Smaragdus, Emerald Page of 377 Ch. 9: Smaragdus, Emerald
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