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Intermediate between the white marbles used for external architecture and the coloured marbles used for internal decoration, and forming the link between them, is the variety called by the Italians cipollino, or onion-stone. Its classical name is Marmor Carystium, from Carystos, a town of Euboea, mentioned by Homer, situated on the south coast of the island at the foot of Mount Oche.
This ancient Marmor Lunense is called by the Italians Marmo di Carrara, because it is identical with the famous modern Carrara marble, and belongs to the same range of strata; the ruins of the ancient Luna being only a few miles from the flourishing town of Carrara, the metropolis of the marble trade.
More beautiful is the kind known as the Marmor Tyrium, or the Greco-Turchinicchio, which has a light bluish tinge. It was shipped by the ancients at the port of Tyre from some unknown quarry in Mount Lebanon, which supplied the marble used without stint in the building and decoration of Solomon's Temple and Palace.
Now beat the ground. Call in alternate strain upon all the heroes. Help us, Marmor. Bound high in solemn measure." Each line was repeated thrice, the last word five times. As regards the separate words, enos, which should perhaps be written e nos, contains the interjectional e, which elsewhere coalesces with vocatives. Lases is the older form of Lares.
This beautiful material was brought from the mountains in the neighbourhood of Jassus a celebrated fishing town of Caria, situated on a small island close to the north coast of the Jassian Bay. From this circumstance it was called by the ancient Romans Marmor Jassense.
Very like Pentelic marble, but easily distinguishable, is the Marmor Porinum, the Marmo Grechetto duro of the Italians. It is intermediate in the quality of its grain between Parian and Pentelic marble, being finer than the former and not so fine as the latter.
The nero antico was the species most esteemed, on account of its compact texture, fine grain, and deep black colour, marked occasionally with minute white short straight lines, always broken and interrupted. It is the Marmor Tænarium of the ancients, quarried in the Tænarian peninsula, which forms the most southerly point in Europe, now called Cape Matapan.
The ancient name of this marble was Marmor Molossium, from a region in Epirus now Albania which was a Roman province in the time of Pompey. It is associated with the celebrated campaigns in Italy of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, in which Greece was for the first time brought into contact with Rome. The region in which the quarries existed was the most ancient seat of Pelasgic religion.
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