The reading of the MS. is μοῤῥίνης. By this is to be understood _vitrum murrhinum_, a sort of china or porcelain made in imitation of cups or vases of _murrha_, a precious fossil-stone resembling, if not identical with, _fluor-spath_, such as is found in Derbyshire. Vessels of this stone were exported from India, and also, as we learn from Pliny, from Karmania, to the Roman market, where they fetched extravagant prices.[14] The “cups baked in Parthian fires” (_pocula Parthis focis cocta_) mentioned by Propertius (IV. v. 26) must be referred to the former class. The whole subject is one which has much exercised the pens of the learned. “Six hundred writers,” says Müller, “emulously applying themselves to explain what had the best claim to be considered the _murrha_ of the ancients, have advanced the most conflicting opinions. Now it is pretty well settled that the murrhine vases were made of that stone which is called in German _flusspath_ (_spato-fluore_)”. He then refers to the following as the principal authorities on the subject:—Pliny—xxxiii. 7 _et seq._; xxxiii. _proœm._ Suetonius—_Oct._ c. 71; Seneca—_Epist._ 123; Martial—iv. 86; xiv. 43; _Digest_—xxxiii. 10, 3; xxxiv. 2. 19; Rozière—_Mémoire sur les Vases murrhins_, &c.; in _Description de l’Égypt_, vol. VI. pp. 277 _et seq._: Corsi—_Delle Pietre antiche_, p. 106; Thiersch—_Ueber die Vasa Murrhina der Alten, in Abhandl. d. Munchn. Akad._ 1835, vol. I. pp. 443-509; A learned Englishman in the _Classical Journal_ for 1810, p. 472; Witzsch in Pauly’s _Real Encycl._ vol. V. p. 253. See also Vincent, vol. II. pp. 723-7. 7. Ὀψιανὸς λίθος—the Opsian or Obsidian stone, found in the Bay of Hanfelah (5). Pliny says,—“The opsians or obsidians are also reckoned as a sort of glass bearing the likeness of the stone which Obsius (or Obsidius) found in Ethiopia, of a very black colour, sometimes even translucent, hazier than ordinary glass to look through, and when used for mirrors on the walls reflecting but shadows instead of distinct images.” (Bk. xxxvi. 37). The only Obsius mentioned in history is a M. Obsius who had been Prætor, a friend of Germanicus, referred to by Tacitus (_Ann._ IV. 68, 71). He had perhaps been for a time prefect of Egypt, and had coasted the shore of Ethiopia at the time when Germanicus traversed Egypt till he came to the confines of Ethiopia. Perhaps, however, the name of the substance is of Greek origin—ὀψιανὀς, from its reflecting power. 8. Σάπφειρος—the Sapphire. Exported from Barbarikon in Indo-Skythia (39). “The ancients distinguished two sorts of dark blue or purple, one of which was spotted with gold. Pliny says it is never pellucid, which seems to make it a different stone from what is now called sapphire.”—Vincent (vol. II. p. 757), who adds in a note, “Dr. Burgess has specimens of both sorts, the one with gold spots like lapis lazuli, and not transparent.”[15]