Portal logo
Login/Register
Bactrian Gold Treasure from Afghanistan, coming soon....
/gemstones/king-gems-decorative-stones/page_020 - 2
 

Aetites, Eagle-Stone

Achates, Agate Page of 384 Aetites, Eagle-Stone Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
AETITES.                                    11
AETITES: Eagle-Stone.
The lively fancy of the Greeks discovered in the forms of many natural objects resemblances to other organic forms, and, by a step not very logical, ascribed to them inherent virtues analogous to this interpretation. Of this system the Aetites is perhaps the most illustrative example, and the one also that the longest maintained its ancient reputa­tion. Pliny describes four species of it (xxxvi. 21). The first was egg-shaped, white, and filled with a soft sweet-tasted clay : this was the female. The second, reddish-coloured externally, contained a stony substance, and passed for the male. The third was filled with a sweetish sand. The fourth, the Laeonian, had inside it a crystalline core, called the Callimus. The best kind were asserted to be found only in the nests of eagles—which could not breed without their aid ; hence their name. They, for this reason, were of the greatest benefit to women in labour ; a notion which even Dioseorides appears to endorse. The substance itself, as the specimens figured by De Boot plainly show, was one of those calcareous hollow concre­tions, sometimes white, sometimes tinged with iron, well known to geologists, and which appear to be accidental for­mations, not petrifactions of older organised bodies.
The Aetites must not, however, be confounded with another stone named in a fragment of Theophrastus Þ lithos ôùí ôéêôïàóùí, " the gem of parturient women ;" to which he also alludes (in section 5) by, " The most wonderful and
Achates, Agate Page of 384 Aetites, Eagle-Stone
Suggested Illustrations
Other Chapters you may find useful
Other Books on this topic
bullet Tag
This Page