MAGIC STONES AND ELECTRIC GEMS 3
the walls of his city, the god Apollo had rested his lyre on the stone.
The
term sarcophagus is to us so clear and precise in its significance,
that we do not stop to think that its etymology reveals it as literally
meaning body-devourer. Tradition taught that a stone of this type was
to be found near Assos in Lycia, Asia Minor, and also in some parts of
the Orient. If attached to the body of a living person it would eat
away the flesh. Another type, already noted by Theophrastus in the
third century b.c., had
the power of petrifying any object placed within receptacles made from
it. If a dead person were buried in a "sarcophagus" of this material
the body would not be consumed, but would, on the contrary, be turned
to stone, even the shoes of the corpse and any utensils buried with it,
would undergo a like wonderful change. Possibly actual observations of
changes in the bodies of those long buried, their partial
disintegration in some cases, and their hardening in others, may have
given rise to the fancy that the stone receptacle in which they had
reposed was directly the cause of this, whether it implied destruction
or petrifaction.4
Of
the substance named galactite, Pliny gives some details. He states
that it came from the Nile, was of the color and had the odor of milk,
and when moistened and scraped produced a juice resembling milk. The
liquid derived from the galactite when taken as a potion by nurses was
said to increase the flow of milk. If a galactite were bound to a
child's arm the effect was to promote the secretion of saliva. To these
favorable effects must be added an unfavorable one, namely, loss of
memory, which was said to befall occasionally those who wore the
stone. A kind of "emerald with white veinings" was sometimes called
galactite, and
«See Theophrasti, "De lapidibus (Peri lithon), ed. by John Hill, London, 1746, pp. 15-17 ; cap. 10.
