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154
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DE NATURA FOSSILIUM
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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
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