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CHAPTER VIII.
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PRECIOUS STONES IN LITERATURE.— THEIR MYSTICAL
PROPERTIES. Objects as beautiful and as valuable as gems would, naturally, claim the attention of writers from the earliest times,
either as rhetorical figures or as themes for scientific and literary investigation and description. The names of many of these writers have come down to us from antiquity, either as historical or traditional characters, but of whose writings nothing now remains. Pliny cites thirty-six ancient writers on precious stones, yet nothing of all their productions on this subject before his time, is extant except the works of Theophrastus, B.C. 300. The so-called Orpheus, whose "Lithika" has been ascribed by some critics to an Asiatic Greek of the fourth century, was written, thinks Mr. King, by the author of the "Argonautica," Apollonius Rhodius, B. C. 222-181, judging from the style and close resemblance of the two poems. In the list of early writers on precious stones or those who
have referred to their uses, we find the names of Herodotus, Democritus, Theophrastus, Pliny, Zoroaster, Solinus, and Quintus Curtius, besides many of the poets and others of less note. Perhaps of all the ancient writers, none have used them more frequently or more effectively as figures of rhetoric, than those of the sacred scriptures, more fully illustrated in the chapter on " Sacred Uses of Precious Stones." Secular writers make frequent use of them for embellishment ; in 131
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