The Greeks regarded diamonds as tears of the gods.
Diamonds are the hardest material known to man.
And yet they have a delicate, even mystical, quality because of their ability to capture light and sparkle so brilliantly. The most common cut, the round brilliant, has 58 facets, which are the small, flat, surfaces on the stone. These polished facets are designed to yield the maximum amount of light to be reflected back to the viewer. This reflection, known as brilliance, is an extremely important factor in evaluating the quality of a diamond. Cut is also used to describe the shape of a diamond.