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NATURAL HISTORY
OF
PRECIOUS STONES AND THE PRECIOUS METALS.
INTRODUCTION.
MINERALOGY OF THE ANCIENTS.
Pliny has quoted by name numerous writers upon Mine­ralogy, for the most part Greeks, from whom he drew in great measure the materials for Books xxxvi. and xxxvii. of his ' Natural History.' The principal amongst these, to judge by the character of his quotations, and his incidental notices of the authors themselves, were the following:— Sotaeus, cited as "the most ancient writer on the subject" (xxxvi. 38): and who appears to have been a physician at the Persian court, like Democedes or Ctesias, for he stated in his work that he had seen the wondrous gem, the Dracontia, " apud Regem," " in the possession of the King," who being designated by this sole title, could, in accordance with Grecian usage, have been no other than the King of Persia. Sotacus therefore must have flourished before the Macedonian Conquest. Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor, much of whose little treatise Pliny has incor­porated into his Book xxxvi.* Sudines and Zenothemis, his
* In the quotations from Pliny throughout this work, the old-established division of the chapters has been observed; although the text followed is that of the last editor, Jan's. That scholar by the aid
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