|
LYNCURIUM.
|
161
|
||
|
|
|||
|
Amber,*
it nowhere existed at all in his time, and that the whole tale was a
fiction. But Theophrastws knew Amber too well to make so ignorant a
mistake, in fact he proceeds to describe it accurately enough in the
next chapter, stating its most obvious properties, and informing us
that the Greeks got it from Liguria, i. e. from the Celts the nearest to them. Besides, the coldness of the substance in his Lyncurium, and its being used for intagli, prove that Theophrastus is describing an amber-coloured stone : for real Amber is remarkably warm to
the touch, and much too soft and brittle to be used for engraving on.
Pliny rejected the account without due examination, partly disgusted by
the ridiculous story of its production ; partly because the stone known
by that name to Theophrastus, was then reckoned amongst the Chrysolithi
by the Romans.
Epiphanius (Iäguriiis) suspected that the Áíãóøéïí of
the Septuagint, of which he could find no account in any Greek
mineralogist, was the Hyacinthus of his own times, on the ground that
so important a stone could not have been omitted by Moses ; and here we
find the first germ of the subsequent confusion of two very different
things. Jerome writing to Flavilla makes the same remark and in almost
the same words. Isidorus, however, correctly explains "Ligurius" as
synonymous with Lyncurium, abbreviating the words of Theophrastus.
There can be no doubt that the gem described by the latter author is our Jacinth (Zircon) the yellow Jargoon.t
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||