ANTIQUE MARBLES. 141 



the long land-carriage of more than one hundred miles to the place of ship- 

 ment. The quarries are entirely surrounded by trachytic hills, to which, 

 says Hamilton, the marble "owes its crystalline and altered character, being 

 to all appearance a portion of the older secondary limestone caught up and 

 developed by the protruded volcanic rocks, and crystallized by igneous 

 action." 



The alabastrites marble of the ancients, or onychites, was not a marble 

 proper, but a hard carbonate of lime, identical in composition with stalag- 

 mite, the modern alabaster. It was quarried, says Pliny, near Thebes, in 

 Egypt, and Damascus. When first brought to Eome it was considered al- 

 most a precious stone, and was made into cups and small ornaments, such 

 aa the feet of couches and chairs. When Balbus decorated his theatre, in 

 the time of Augustus, with four small columns of this stone, it was noted as 

 an unprecedented occurrence; but, in the reign of Claudius, Oallistus, a 

 freedman of that emperor, adorned his banquet hall with thirty large 

 columns of alabastrites. The ancient quarries were reopened by Mehemet 

 Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, to obtain material to build his mausoleum at Cairo. 

 The four magnificent pillars of this marble that support the baldacchino 

 over the altar in the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, in Rome, were 

 presented by him. Each is a monolith forty feet long. 



Of the yellow marbles of antiquity, that called by the Italians giallo 

 antico is the rarest and most beautiful. There are several varieties of it, va- 

 rying in tint from a cream-yellow to the deepest chrome-yellow, sometimes, 

 shading into red and purple hues. Some is as bright as gold (giallo dorato), 

 some of an orange-shade (giallo capo), and some, extremely rare, of a canary- 

 color (giallo paglia). The ancient writers compared it to saffron, to sunlight 

 and to ivory grown yellow with age. Some of it is variegated with black 

 or dark-yellow rings. The grain is exceedingly fine. Its colors are de- 

 rived entirely from carbonaceous matter. Among the finest existing speci- 

 mens of this marble are the large columns in the Pantheon at Home, and a 

 single pair in the Arch of Constantine. The giallo antico was called marmor 

 Numidicum by the Romans, but the precise site of the quarries is not yet 

 ascertained. M. Fournel believes that the yellow marble of Philippeville, 

 Algeria, which closely resembles it in varying tint, is identical with it. 

 The island of Molos and Corinth also produced yellow marbles, and in the 

 time of Justinian a marble of a fiery yellow was quarried in the neighbor- 

 hood of Jerusalem. 



Among the most celebrated marbles of the ancient world was the rosso 

 antico, or red antique. Its color passes from a red, almost scarlet, to a 

 wine-lees or blood-red, which is divided by parallel layers of white, and 

 sometimes also intersected by a network of delicate black veins. Its varia- 

 tion in tint is probably according to the quantity of the oxide of iron con- 

 tained in it. Until lately this marble was known only through its remains, 

 and it has generally been ascribed to Egypt. The largest ancient speci- 

 mens preserved are the fourteen slabs composing the double flight of steps 



