here. The early Greek gems described by Furtwangler114 which are green in color are all made of quartz, and it is very probable that here, and in the previous sections where Theophrastus says that smaragdos was used for seals, green quartz in the form of plasma or prase is to be understood.
24. But it is rare and of small size, unless we are to believe the records about the Egyptian kings. Elsewhere in the treatise Theophrastus alludes to the scarcity or small size of the smaragdos (sees. 8,26,27,34), and some writers115 have concluded that emerald is meant whenever he alludes to the stone in this way. There is, however, no evidence that Theophrastus ever used the name smaragdos for an emerald. Moreover, the stones listed with it in section 8, which he describes as small and rare, are not especially rare and are not always small. In these respects they differ little from plasma or prase. Therefore, when Theophrastus refers to smaragdos in this way, he may well be speaking of the green quartz commonly used as a seal stone by the Greeks.
Although there was probably some real basis for the reports about smaragdoi of great size, Theophrastus shows clearly by his wording that he hesitated to accept these accounts without question. This was not because he thought that green stone objects of large dimensions did not exist, but because he doubted that the kind used for seals ever occurred in large masses. Certainly, if the accounts concerning them were not mere inventions or gross exaggerations, these large Egyptian smaragdoi could not have been actual precious stones. It is possible, however, that they may have been composed of malachite, which even now is sometimes regarded as a semiprecious ornamental stone. This native copper carbonate has been found in the form of solid blocks weighing several thousand pounds; in fact, it is the only bright green mineral substance that occurs in such large pieces. In modern times the copper mines in the Ural Mountains have been the source of some very large blocks of malachite. For example, the largest
114 Die antigen Gemmen, II, 37-69, 152-53.
115 E.g., Bliimner, Technologic und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste bet Griechen und Romern, Vol. Ill, p. 240.
