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Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone

Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Page of 251 Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
74
DE NATURA FOSSILIUM
Actually amber is not only cast up on islands where it can be collected but also upon the shores of both peninsulas and continents. Therefore neither Pytheas nor Timaeus writes anything which is definite and we have no knowledge of the existence of either of these islands today. The last three writers believed that the place in which amber originates deserves a description. Nicias, with excessive frankness, wrote only that it was land to the west and Cornelius Tacitus, islands and lands to the west. Each writer gives reasons why it originates in the west. The former considered Greece since anything coming from there, no matter what it was, was con­sidered to have come from the west. Tacitus considered the eastern coun­tries where the forests and trees exude incense and balsam and these ac­tually are in the west. Pliny is correct when he writes that it forms on islands in the North Sea and one of these has been named Glessaria by the soldiers of Germanicus Caesar who fought there since glessum is the German name for amber. The island is called Austrauia by the barbarians. Mithridates calls the island where it originates, Osterica, both of these latter names being of German origin. Austrauia signifies to us a plain situated in a low region to the east, Osterica an eastern kingdom. The Germans who live at the mouth of the Rhine along the shore call the islands where amber would form by these same names because they are to the east. However, if we study the shores upon which amber is thrown, we find them situated in the west and facing to the north. Mithridates believed that amber formed from a variety of cedar and fell in a petrified form but how this was effected he does not say. After falling it rolled to the sea and was picked up from the shore. Others write that it was cast on to the shore having been torn from both the land and the islands. Nicias writes that it is cast up on the coast of Germany. Pliny is seen to be in agreement with this since he writes of the distance from the German shore where it is found to a town of Pannonia. Although it is found in Germany along the coast between the Suebi river and the mouth of the Vistula this is a small amount compared to that which is found on the famous peninsula. Cornelius Tacitus writes, correctly, that the people of Aestyus collect it on their shores. A certain priest has written recently, for posterity, that amber flows from the cliffs along our shore into the sea. Some of the Germans, although very few, know that it is spread abroad from the cliffs of this peninsula. The uncouth Prussians have no knowledge of this. The amber that is cast up on the shore in this particu­lar area, by west and north winds, is a golden-yellow. This part of the peninsula belongs to Samaidensis, called Sambiensis by some, Samlandia by others. This portion of Prussia extends from the Pregala river, which Ptolomaeus calls Chronus, to the sea. There it is called Sudavia and hence the racial name Sudini. This maritime province, which faces to the north, extends approximately thirty-five miles from the west promontory of the peninsula, called Brusta, to another promontory which takes its name from the Curis people. Actually it is but little larger than Sudavia and
Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Page of 251 Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone
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