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78
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NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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setting the fire at defiance,—the last character a proof that he is speaking of the Ruby.
In these gems, therefore, Ceraunia or Ceraunias was no more than an epithet, " Lightning-like," applied to any especially lustrous stone of the Corundum class.
But
the second part of Pliny's notice introduces a very different and most
curious idea. Isidorus indeed pretends that the gem falls from the sky
in thunderstorms, but this is merely a theory coined by himself to
explain the name, for he adds êöáííïò in Greek signifies
lightning. But Sotacus, as quoted here by Pliny, " makes two other
kinds of the Ceraunia (besides those first noticed), the black and the
red, resembling axes in shape. Of these, such as are black and
round are holy things, cities and fleets can be captured by their
means, and they are called Battyli, but those of an elongated form Cerauniae. Others make out a third sort, greatly sought after by the Magi, inasmuch as it is only found in places struck by lightning."
This last remark seems to have been the origin of the etymology of Isidorus referring to gems of a totally different character.
The comparison of the second and third class of Cerauniae to axes, at
first sight so inexplicable, becomes quite intelligible when we
recollect that the popular German name to this day for the stone-axes
of the primeval Celts is " Donnerkeil," or thunder-bolt. Such the
country-folks still believe fall from the sky in storms, and are to be
dug up wherever the lightning has penetrated the earth. Thor, the
Teutonic Jove, is represented armed with a huge stone-hammer, in the
place of the classical winged thunderbolt (which, by the way, is always
pictured as a double-pointed cone, but equipped with wings). As these
primeval weapons are often exhumed in the neighbourhood of old Teutonic
temples, it is probable they continued to be used as sacri-
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