There appear to have been two kinds of these vasa murrhina; those that came from Asia, and those that were made in Egypt. The latter were much more common, and much lower priced than the former, as appears from various passages in Martial and Propertius. Many attempts have been made, and much learning displayed by the moderns to determine the nature of these celebrated vessels; but in general these attempts were made by individuals too little acquainted with chemistry and with natural history in general to qualify them for researches of so difficult a nature. Some will have it that they consisted of a kind of gum; others that they were made of glass; others, of a particular kind of shell. Cardan and Scaliger assure us that they were _porcelain_ vessels; and this opinion was adopted likewise by Whitaker, who supported it with his usual violence and arrogance. Many conceive them to have been made of some precious stone, some that they were of _obsidian_; Count de Veltheim thinks that they were made of the Chinese _agalmatolite_, or _figure stone_; and Dr. Hager conceives that they were made from the Chinese stone _yu_. Bruckmann was of opinion that these vessels were made of sardonyx, and the Abbé Winckelmann joins him in the same conclusion. Pliny informs us that these vasa murrhina were formed from a species of stone dug out of the earth in Parthia, and especially in Carimania, and also in other places but little known.[79] They must have been very abundant at Rome in the time of Nero; for Pliny informs us that a man of consular rank, famous for his collection of vasa murrhina, having died, Nero forcibly deprived his children of these vessels, and they were so numerous that they filled the whole inside of a theatre, which Nero hoped to have seen filled with Romans when he came to it to sing in public. [79] Plinii Hist. Nat. xxxvii. 2. It is clear that the value of these vessels depended on their size. Small vessels bore but a small price, while that of large vessels was very high; this shows us that it must have been difficult to procure a block of the stone out of which they were cut, of a size sufficiently great to make a large vessel. These vessels were so soft that an impression might be made upon them with the teeth; for Pliny relates the story of a man of consular rank, who drank out of one, and was so enamoured with it that he bit pieces out of the lip of the cup: “Potavit ex eo ante hos annos consularis, ob amorem abraso ejus margine.” And what is singular, the value of the cup, so far from being injured by this abrasure, was augmented: “ut tamen injuria ilia pretium augeret; neque est hodie murrhini alterius præstantior indicatura.”[80] It is clear from this that the matter of these vessels was neither rock crystal, agate, nor any precious stone whatever, all of which are too hard to admit of an impression from the teeth of a man. [80] Plinii Hist. Nat. xxxvii. 2.