demands,
restored to its original shrine. The authenticity of the details in
Nonnus appear from several considerations. Firstly, from his minuteness
in this particular point, whilst' he passes over all the other
components of the bridal trousseau in the most vague and
cursory terms. Secondly, from the very confusedness of his account, for
he is evidently putting into verse a technical and detailed
description the terms of which he was himself far, from
comprehending. Again, the entire character of the jewel, minutely
correct if regarded as an archaic work, is totally diverse from that of
the decorative art of the Lower Empire, and such as no poet of those
times could possibly have devised by his unassisted imagination. Its
whole design is Assyrian, for by extracting the sense of the flowery
and intricate verses above cited, we discover its form to have been a torques, shaped
like a double-headed serpent (precisely that seen on the neck of
Darius in the Pompeian mosaic) : the centre-ornament was an eagle
having four wings, adjuncts unknown to Greek art, but typical
of Assyrian—it was the Babylonian lynx, the Hebrew Cherub —each wing
set with a different gem ; a Jasper, a Moonstone, an Indian Agate, a
Pearl : having also a pendant composed of an Emerald and a Crystal
surrounded by a framework of fishes and birds : the eyes of the
serpents were of Lychnis, i. e. Spinels. The choice of these
gems attests again the antiquity of the work ; the Agate and Jasper
ranking with the Pearl and the Ruby. A poet of the fourth century would
have thought scorn of those then so vulgar gems, and would, like one of
our day, have substituted for them the Diamond and the Opal, especially
in the reputed handiwork of a god.
All
the magnificent works in which the artist-goldsmiths of Asia, Greece,
and Rome displayed their wondrous taste and skill, have utterly
perished. Of their magnificence
