Porphyrites,[2509] which is another production of Egypt, is of a red colour: the kind that is mottled with white blotches is known as “leptospsephos.”[2510] The quarries there are able to furnish blocks[2511] of any dimensions, however large. Vitrasius Pollio, who was steward[2512] in Egypt for the Emperor Claudius, brought to Rome from Egypt some statues made of this stone; a novelty which was not very highly approved of, as no one has since followed his example. The Egyptians, too, have discovered in Æthiopia the stone known as “basanites;”[2513] which in colour and hardness resembles iron, whence the name[2514] that has been given to it. A larger block of it has never been known than the one forming the group which has been dedicated by the Emperor Vespasianus Augustus in the Temple of Peace. It represents the river Nilus with sixteen children sporting around it,[2515] symbolical of the sixteen cubits, the extreme height[2516] to which, in the most favourable seasons, that river should rise. It is stated, too, that in the Temple of Serapis at Thebes, there is a block not unlike it, which forms the statue of Memnon[2517] there; remarkable, it is said, for emitting a sound each morning when first touched by the rays of the rising sun. CHAP. 12.—ONYX AND ALABASTRITES; SIX REMEDIES. Our forefathers imagined that onyx[2518] was only to be found in the mountains of Arabia, and nowhere else; but Sudines[2519] was aware that it is also found in Carmania.[2520] Drinking-vessels were made of it at first, and then the feet of beds and chairs. Cornelius Nepos relates that great was the astonishment, when P. Lentulus Spinther exhibited amphoræ made of this material, as large as Chian wine-vessels in size; “and yet, five years after,” says he, “I saw columns of this material, no less than two-and-thirty feet in height.” At a more recent period again, some change took place[2521] with reference to this stone; for four[2522] small pillars of it were erected by Cornelius Balbus in his Theatre[2523] as something quite marvellous: and I myself have seen thirty columns, of larger size, in the banquetting-room which Callistus[2524] erected, the freedman of Claudius, so well known for the influence which he possessed.