AGATE, among antiquaries, denotes a stone of this kind engraven by art. In this sense, agates make a species of antique gems; in the workmanship whereof we find eminent proofs of the great skill and dexterity of the sculptors. Several agates of exquisite beauty are preserved in the cabinets of the curious; but the facts or histories represented on these antique agates, however well executed, are now become so obscure, and their explications so difficult, that several diverting mistakes and disputes have arisen among those who undertook to give their true meaning.
The great agate of the apothecosis of Augustus, in the treasury of the holy chapel, when sent from Constantinople to St. Lewis, passed for a triumph of Joseph. An agate, now in the French king's cabinet, had been kept 700 years with great devotion, in the Benedictine abbey of St. Evre at Toul, where it passed for St. John the Evangelist carried away by an eagle, and crowned by an angel; but the Heathenism of it having been lately detected, the religious would no longer give it a place among their relics, but presented it in 1684 to the king. The antiquaries found it to be the apothecosis of Germanicus. In like manner the triumph of Joseph was found to be a representation of Germanicus and Agrippina, under the figures of Ceres and Triptolemus. Another was preserved, from time immemorial, in one of the most ancient churches of France, where it had passed for a representation of paradise and the fall of man; there being found on it two figures representing Adam and Eve, with a tree, a serpent, and a Hebrew inscription round it, taken from the third chapter of Genesis, "The woman saw that the tree was good," &c. The French academists, instead of our first parents, found Jupiter and Minerva represented by the two figures: the inscription was of a modern date, written in a Rabbinical character, very incorrect, and poorly engraven. The prevailing opinion was, that this agate represented simply the worship of Jupiter and Minerva at Athens.