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BOOK VI
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141
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We shall take up achates (agate) next. The name is derived from a river of the same name in Sicily48
where the mineral was first found. It not only varies in color but also
in the images of things seen in it, images which are not the result of
artificial treatment but have been formed within the stone by nature.
Sometimes veins and spots are scattered through a stone in such a
manner that they represent a wood-pigeon and are called phassachates by the Greeks. Stones that show a horn are called cerachates.i9 These stones may show one, two or more trees and sometimes they seem to contain an entire forest and hence are called dendrachates (dendritic agate). This is the variety that Camillus, the Pisaurian,60
describes when he writes that it appears to be a plain with seven
trees. Some portray rivers, chariots and horses. They do not contain as
many images of birds as of beasts of burden and men. In the agate
belonging to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, there appreared the nine Muses
together with Apollo holding a cithara, a gem not produced by art but
created by nature. According to Pliny spots were scattered here and
there through the stone in such a manner that each Muse stood out
individually. This particular agate came from India.61
Agate
is either black, dark blue, gray, coral-red, the color of the pelt of a
hyena, lion, panther or the color of the flowers that grow in the
fields. The Greeks call the stones that are the color of a lion pelt leontios or leontodora and that of the panther, pardalios. Stones of these colors, especially the first-named color, often have white veins running through them and are called leucachates, those with blood-red veins, haemachates and those with sard-red veins, sardachates. The coral-red agate is called corallachates. Agates
with golden points similar to lapis-lazuli are found most abundantly on
the island of Crete where they are regarded as sacred, according to
Pliny; in India and at Syene. The stones that are the color of field
flowers are found in Thrace; Thessaly near Oeta; on Mt. Parnassus,
Greece; at Achia, Messenia; on Lesbos and Rhodes. The other agates are
found in Sicily, Cyprus, Phrygia, Persia and at Thebes, Egypt. Pliny
writes that the stones from Cyprus have the same transparency as glass.
The Egyptian stones lack the red and white veins. Dionysius Afer writes
that the Persian streams carry agates down to the banks of the Choaspes
river after they have been removed from rock by torrents. These Persian
48 This river is now known as the Drillo river.
49 Today this name, ceragate, is given to yellow or wax-colored agate or chalcedony.
60 This is the sole reference to the popular lapidary Speculum Lapidum (The
Mirror of Stones) by Camillus Leonardus Pisaurensis. This most
interesting and valuable work was first published in Venice in 1502, in
Latin, and later editions in other languages appeared for over 250
years. Since Agricola makes no reference to the many and popular
lapidaries written in the Middle Ages and earlier we may conclude that
he gave little credulence to the marvellous virtues and properties
their authors ascribed to gems and stones.
61 This
is an excellent description of the mocha-stone or dendritic agate which
presents an endless variety of markings resembling profiles, plants and
trees.
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