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Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications

Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Page of 251 Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
154
DE NATURA FOSSILIUM
Lunense marble is variegated and, according to Strabo, passes to a bluish gray color. Some marbles have not been described properly by the writers who mention them, for example, Spanish marble; Traguran from near Tragurium, Liburnus or Croatia; Hymettan from Mt. Hymettus, Attica; Pentellican also from Mr. Hymettus, Attica; and Cyzicene from the island of Elaphonnesus near Cyzicus. So much concerning the color and mark­ings of marbles.
I shall now take up the varieties of marbles which have been brought to the cities. The Romans not only carried away marbles from the quarries of Greece, Asia, Egypt and other regions but also robbed the temples and holy places in these regions of their statues and columns.
I shall now discuss some of the other qualities of marbles. There is one in Hildesheim that, as I have said, is gray or somewhat darker. When rubbed against another stone or even against another piece of the same stone it has a strong odor of burnt horn. In this same locality there is a black to reddish variety with distinctive white veins that has an even stronger odor. Some marble is hard such as the black ophites, some soft such as the white ophites and the Zeblican marble from Misena. The surface of some of the Hildesheim stones is very porous. The Rochlican material is often rough even after polishing.
Concerning the form of marbles they are rarely found in the small lumps that are characteristic of the material from a town called Crocea. They sometimes occur in such large masses that the longest pillars which the Greeks call στήλας can be cut from them as well as the very wide slabs or blocks they call πτλάκο$. Actually marble is commonly found in slabs that are wider than they are thick and these the Greeks call πλαταμών. These are found in Rhodes; in Rhetia where it is known as Reginobergan marble; and in Saxony near Hildesheim where the various gray and black marbles I have mentioned are found. The latter are rarely more than two inches thick. Nature also produces columns which may be rounded such as the syenites that are found along the road between Syene and Phila, Thebes. Some natural columns are angular such as the basaltes in Misena which was used, as I have mentioned before, to build the castle of Stolpa where the governor of Misena lives. All angular columns are not alike but have a minimum of four corners and a maximum of seven. These columns usually occur tightly packed together. Those from Thebes may occur as single columns. Sometimes one occurs on another, even a small one on a larger one. The largest ones from Misena are one and one-half feet thick and fourteen feet long while those from Thebes may be as much as twelve feet thick and over one hundred feet long. We know this to be true because of the size of the obelisks erected by the kings of Egypt. Near these columnar stones they find the spherical stones from which they make the mortars and pestles used in preparing eye salves.
Artisans make many other objects from marble. The older workers used the white ophites for vases and jugs. The Zeblican marble is used
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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