The balas-ruby (originally a spinel from Badakshan) was one of the most admired precious stones in medieval times, before the diamond was helped to its proud preëminence by having its beauties revealed through the exercise of the diamond-cutters’ skill. Almost all the large “rubies” of which we read, those of Europe at least, were balas-rubies, as were also by far the greater part of the so-called rubies in Oriental royal collections of that and later times. The great Italian poet Dante uses this stone (_balascio_) as a symbol of the glowing radiance of divine joy in the following lines from the Divina Commedia (Paradiso, ix, 67–69): L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota Preclara cosa, mi si fece in vista Qual fin balascio in che lo sol percota. In very ancient times as well as at the present day (if we admit that the _anthrax_ of Theophrastus really was ruby and not a pyrope garnet), the ruby was the most valuable of all precious stones, the Greek writer stating that at the time he wrote, about 260 B.C., an exceedingly small specimen would sell for as much as forty gold pieces. His statement that these stones came from Carthage and Marseilles should not induce us to prejudge the question as to their real character, as many articles of Asiatic commerce were distributed from these parts, more especially from the great Carthaginian seaport.[705] A variety of sapphire, having, to a certain extent, the coloration of the ruby, was called by natives of Ceylon in the sixteenth century _nilacandi_;[706] this might be rendered sapphire-ruby. These stones are purple-red by daylight, but artificial light kills the blue and they appear red. They are frequently called phenomenal sapphires or alexandrite sapphires. Indian poetic fancy has connected the creation of sapphires in Ceylon with the fair maidens of that island.[707] When the young Cingalese maidens sway, with the tips of their fingers, the stems of the lavali blossoms, then do the two dark blue eyes of the Daitya fall, eyes with a sheen like that of the lotus in full bloom. Hence it is that this island, with its long sea-coast and its interminable forests of ketskas, abounds in magnificent sapphires, which are its glory. The following pretty bit of Oriental imagery occurs in a Cinghalese poem on the deeds of Constantino de Sá, a Portuguese Captain-General. Here the poet, writing of a river that flowed through the island, calls it “that lovely stream, the Kaluganga, which meandered as a sapphire chain over the shoulders of the maiden Lanka.”[708] Lanka is a Cingalese name for Ceylon.