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Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth

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BOOK X
211
Stibi (stibnite) which is called στίμμι by the Greeks has a color some­what similar to galena but is brighter and whiter. Pliny calls it "the stone of shining white foam" because it is similar in color and brilliancy to spuma argcnti. The mineral is divided into male and female varieties. Pliny writes that the male stibnite is harsher, rougher, more sandy, lighter in weight, and duller. The female variety is more brilliant, more fragile, and can be cleaved with ease. It is found in the silver mines of Hohenstein, Misena, ten miles from Chemnitz; in Bohemia near the towns of Plana and Perzibram. At one time it was found in Chalcedon, Bithynia, and called chalcedonius; also in Italy where it was called italicus. At one time stibnite was sold as the native mineral and Dioscorides regarded as the best that which was most brilliant, most easily cleaved, most fragile, and contained the least earth and foreign material. This was the varitey Pliny called female. In former times this was burnt and then shaped into lozenges. In the time of Hippocrates these lozenges were usually cubic and for that reason he called the mineral rtrpaywvos. Actually the mineral is not cubic, neither the rounded masses that have not been cleaved nor the cleavages themselves. In our time the refined mineral is sold, not the native stibnite. I shall explain the method of refining it in the book De Re Metallica. It is drying and astringent and for that reason is used in eye remedies. It colors black and for that reason women smear it on their eyelids and because of this use some Greeks called it ywaiKios. Eyes so colored appear to be enlarged and for that reason other Greeks have called it πλατυόφθαλμος.
The name pyrites (pyrite) comes from the word for fire which can be produced from it when struck with iron or some hard stone. Aristotle and his student Theophrastus named it -πυρίμαχος because it is naturally in­compatible with fire. When placed in a very hot furnace it melts but \vhen it flows from the furnace into a mold it hardens and congeals again. Before hardening the furnace workers divide the cakes of pyrite into flat circular forms they call "stones." Actually some pyrite is mined that appears to have formed from material that had just been as fluid within the earth as the molten material in a furnace. Although pyrite may con­tain no gold, silver, copper or lead nevertheless it is a mixed stone, not a pure one, since it consists of a stone and a certain metallic substance characteristic of this form. The metallic substance cannot be worked by hammering although it melts in a fire and can be cast. Pyrite usually contains a metal, that from Reichenstein, Lygius, silver and gold; from Cotteberg, Bohemia, copper and silver; from Goslar, Saxony, lead, tin, copper and silver; and from many places, especially Cuperberg, Bohemia,
the same properties as lead concentrate and lead slag and is washed in the same fashion as the former. . . . What the Latins call a vein, the Greeks sometimes call an earth, sometimes a stone, as I understand them and thus it appears to me that plumbarius lapis is merely another name for a lead vein."
Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth Page of 251 Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth
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