598 APPENDIX. 



being of the colour of tender herbs or grass. These descrip- 

 tions can scarcely be more justly applied than to what has 

 been called green porphyry, the erroneous ophites of many 

 modern authors, the base being of a leek green, while the 

 crystals of felspar approach the emerald colour; and it is 

 often spotted with white and black chalcedony, and in other 

 instances with white felspar and black siderite. This beauti- 

 ful stone seems to have been discovered after the empire was 

 transferred to Constantinople j for it escaped the ancient 

 classics, and continues to be celebrated from the time of 

 Justinian, and that of Basilius the Macedonian, to that of 

 Eustathius in the eleventh century, who mentions it, in the 

 love story of Ismene, as quite distinct from the Laconian. It 

 has been generally supposed to be from Egypt j but is not 

 specified in any of the recent descriptions as being found 

 in that country, where the red porphyry is not uncommon, 

 and is found in pebbles in the universal bricia. The great 

 masses found at the harbour of Ostia, only prove that it was 

 brought by sea to that sole port of Rome*. 



RED. The Rosso Antico. The ancients seem sometimes 

 to have confounded red marble with porphyry, which was 

 quarried in the Thebaid. But statues show that red marble 

 was also found in Egypt, or the adjoining countries ; and it 

 is highly probable, if not demonstrable, as already explained, 

 that the Augusteum and Tiberianum of Pliny alluded to this 

 red, purpureus, or imperial colour. One kind of the Rosso 

 antico is fioriio, that is the Augustean ; another all dotted 

 over, the Tiberian. The colossal statue of Agrippa, formerly 

 in the Pantheon, now in the Grimani palace at Venice, is of 

 Rosso antico. 



YELLOW. The Numidian. Paul Sil. says yellow and gold 

 (Lumachella Castracanar) and found in Mount Maurausis 



* Wad has one Egyptian relic of what lie calls green porphyry, a scarabaeus} 

 but it is of hornstone. 



