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Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications

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BOOK VII
149
ivory-white and from it they cut the gem arabica. Pliny writes that this gem is the color of ivory and might be confused with it if it were not for the hardness.2
Chernites, from which they made the sepulcher of Darius according to Theophrastus, is said to be white marble. It is found in small quantities in Cappadocia on the border of Galatia and is commonly used to make the hilts of swords. It is found in Hildesheim and in the Harz forest near Elbingerode and near the village of Bentechestein as well as in neighbor­ing places. Some is found in the silver mines of Misena. The Asiatic material is found in even smaller masses than the German since Pliny writes that it is never larger than three feet across. Some of the German material has hardened into stalactites that are often translucent and with a fine luster even though they have not been polished. This min­eral often contains many wavy lines that resemble smoke, especially that found in Cappadocia and Phrygia which is considered the finest. According to Pliny they cut gems from this and if it is similar to ivory but suffused with smoke it is called capnites. So much concerning white marble.
I now come to gray and black marbles. A whitish gray stone is quarried in Hildesheim beyond Mt. Saint Mark with a luster similar to lapis judaicus on freshly broken surfaces. The Saxons use this stone to surface roads. A varicolored marble is found on a hill in this same region, particu­larly at the foot of the hill, not far from the Indersta river. The bulk of this rock is gray to dark colored. This occurs in thin beds whose surfaces are usually full of holes. In the same district a black marble containing narrow white veins is found on the left side of the entrance to a cave named for dwarfs. The Saxons do not use the ordinary marble found on each side of this. Taenarian marble is black and comes from Taenarus, a promon­tory of Laconia. Part of the temple of Florentia, mentioned above, is built of this marble. Lucullean marble is a dull black and came from an island in the Nile, according to Pliny, from whence it was taken to Rome. Two columns forty feet high were made from it and placed in the open court of the home of Scaurus. The Lydian marble is also a dull black.3 Two enormous lions that stand on the steps of the Capitol in Rome are sculptured from this stone as well as a head of Cybele in the house of an attendant of Magdalona in Naples. Recently a sepulchre for Caelius of Rome was cut from this rock and placed in the Church of the Sacred Cross.
Some marble is iron-gray, for example, the basaltes from Egypt that is found in Ethiopia.4 A similar marble from Misena is not inferior to basaltes either in color which is a deep iron-gray, or in hardness since iron workers use it as an anvil. The castle of the governor of Misena at Stolpa
2 Marble has a hardness of 3 in the Mohr scale, ivory, approximately 5.
* It is possible that Agrieola is describing an igneous rock and not a marble.
4 Both igneous and sedimentary rocks are included here.
Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Page of 251 Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications
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