Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/372

 336 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. The illusion is therefore great, if not quite complete." 1 In the time of Pliny the chief precious stones were constantly imitated. 2 The emerald was one of the easiest to counterfeit. 3 But such imitations were made long before the Roman time. In his de- scription of the temple of Melkart, at Tyre, Herodotus speaks with wonder of an emerald column which shone at night-time. 4 It is likely enough that it was nothing more than a shaft of emerald glass, made with unusual care and so contrived as to inclose a lamp. 5 It is clear that when once this industry was started it was easy enough to turn out glass scarabs, cones, amulets and other small objects in any number. 6 We have found scarabs of glass paste in Sardinia. As a rule they were made of a whitish and nearly opaque glass which is not easily distinguished, at the first glance, from enamelled earthenware. The necklace from Tharros, which was presented to the Louvre by M. Benjamin Delessert, is com- posed of more than forty heads, of two cylinders, of four grotesque bulls' heads, and of a large bearded mask in the centre of the ornament (Plate X.). All these pieces are of glass. In the neck- lace figured below, its glass beads are mingled with carnelions and agates. This latter trinket comes from M. Kenan's excavations in Phoenicia ; the necklaces and bracelets at the top of the plate come from the same place. The long olive-shaped beads are all of glass. At Cameiros a large number of glass objects of a whitish paste, sometimes lightly tinted with blue, have been found. Of these each type is represented by several examples, and it is easy to see that only a few moulds were used for the production of them all. 7 Some of these, like this miniature cenochoe, may have been used as pendants for necklaces or bracelets (Fig. 257), but the majority are 1 FROEHNER, La Verrerie antique, p. 45. 2 PLINY, Nat. Hist, xxvii. 98, 128. 3 Ibid, xxxvii. 112. 4 HERODOTUS, ii. 44. 5 Down to the time of Guyton de Morveau the material of which the sacro catino at Genoa is composed was believed to be emerald. The French chemist proved that it is nothing more than glass. 6 Even in the Roman period the ring with a glass stone in it was called the "jewel of the poor" (PLINY, " vitreis gemmis e volgi annulis ; " Nat. Hist. xxxv. 48). 7 The British Museum possesses one of the hard-stone moulds used for this purpose. It is an earring mould, and is made of a greenish rock, like breccia. All the objects reproduced in our Figs. 534-541 belong to the British Museum.