or Parium_, or Marmo Greco duro, as it is called by the
modern Italians, is the very flower and consummation of the rocks.
This material seems to have been created specially for the use of the
sculptor--as that in which he can express most clearly and beautifully
his ideal conceptions; and the surpassing excellence of ancient Greek
sculpture was largely due to the suitability for high art of the
marble of the country, which was so stainlessly pure, delicate, and
uniform--as Ruskin remarks, so soft as to allow the sculptor to work
it without force, and trace on it his finest lines, and yet so hard as
never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the chisel. Parian
marble is by far the most beautiful of the Greek marbles. It is a
nearly pure carbonate of lime of creamy whiteness, with a finely
crystalline granular structure, and is nearly translucent. It may be
readily distinguished from all other white marbles by the peculiarly
sparkling light that shines from its crystalline facets on being
freshly broken; and this peculiarity enables the expert at once to
determine the origin of any fragment of Greek or Roman statuary. The
ancient quarries in the island of Paros are still wrought, though very
little marble from this source is exported to other countries. In the
entablature around the tomb of Caecilia Metella, which is composed of
Parian marble, we see the first example in Rome of the use of
ornaments in marble upon the outside of a building; an example that
was afterwards extensively followed, for all the tombs of a later age
on the Appian Way had their exteriors sheathed with a veneer of
marble. The beautiful sarcophagus which contained the remains of the
noble lady for whom this gigantic pile was erected, and which is now
in the Farnese Palace, was also formed of this material. Most
beautiful examples of Parian marble may be seen in the three elegant
columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum,
belonging to the best period of Graeco-Roman architecture; and in the
nineteen fluted Corinthian pillars which form the little circular
temple of Hercules on the banks of the Tiber, long supposed to be the
Temple of Vesta. By far the largest mass of this marble in Rome is the
colossal fragment in front of the Colosseum that belonged to the
Temple of Venus and Rome; and it helps to give one an idea of the
extraordinary grandeur and magnificence of this building in its prime,
whose fluted columns, six feet i