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THEOPHRASTUS ON STONES
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tiquity, and that it was mainly used for the manufacture of incombustible cloth, though evidently wicks for oil lamps were also made of it.81 Moreover, direct evidence of the use of asbestos by the ancients has been obtained in modern times by the discovery of ancient garments woven from this mineral.82 It is, however, unlikely that Theophrastus is alluding to asbestos, since the mineral does not occur in the locality mentioned. There were only two known sources of asbestos in Greece and its vicinity in ancient times: Karystos at the southern extremity of the island of Euboea, and a place to the southeast of Mt. Troodos on Cyprus, where the abandoned workings are still to be seen today.
It is much more probable that Theophrastus is referring to the well-known brown fibrous lignite, which in appearance and in other respects very often closely resembles rotten wood. Lignite of various kinds is known to occur in the region named by Theophrastus. He seems to be pointing out that when oil is poured on this material and ignited, the oil burns away without igniting the material, though this would be combustible under the proper conditions. Lignite of the kind to which he apparently refers often contains in its natural state as much as 20 per cent of water; thus it cannot readily be ignited, though it is combustible when it is properly dried out, and this soon happens if, for example, it is placed on a bed of glowing coals. As Theophrastus shows in the last sentence of this section, he is dealing here and in most of the preceding sections of this chapter with mineral substances that are actually combustible. The discussion of incombustible minerals is taken up in the next chapter and, if the interpretation of this passage is correct, his description of a combustible mineral substance which under certain conditions is incombustible affords a logical transition to his next general topic. Indeed, since Theophrastus in other places in this treatise makes similar transitions, this peculiarity of his style might possibly be taken as additional evidence in support of this identification.
17. Whenever oil was poured on it, it burnt. In this passage the optatives επιχεοιτο and ϊκκανθΐίη, which are
81Strabo, X, i, 6; Dioscorides V, 155 (Wellmann ed., V, 138); Pliny, XIX, 19-20, and XXXVI, 139; Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, 434A; Pausanias, I, 26, 7. 82 Stephanides, The Mineralogy of Theophrastus, p. 121.
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