these huge smaragdoi were made of green glass, as some have suggested, is not very probable, because, as Partington120 has pointed out, it is very doubtful from a technical standpoint that such enormous pieces of glass could have been successfully fashioned by ancient glassworkers. The existence of large smaragdoi in Egypt is mentioned by other ancient writers. Pliny,121 for instance, after quoting the statements of Theophrastus almost word for word, mentions a recent example in the Labyrinth of Egypt; there Apion saw a colossal statue of Serapis, nine cubits in height, which was composed of smaragdus.
25. tanoi. In the manuscripts and the Aldine edition, the first part of this word is missing and only the last four letters (ανων) have survived. Turnebus, who was followed by Hill, thought that the best emendation was τανων; the emendation of Furlanus, which Wimmer preferred, was βακτριανων. It is true that stones from Bactria are mentioned by Theophrastus in section 35, and, Pliny122 lists the Bactrian as a particular variety of smaragdus. But both Theophrastus and Pliny say that Bactrian stones are small, whereas the stone in question here was evidently a mineral substance found in pieces of considerable size. Moreover, as the notes on section 35 explain, it is highly probable that Pliny classed the Bactrian stones as one kind of smaragdus only because he misunderstood the meaning of Theophrastus in section 35. The evidence for the reading τανων is that Pliny123 clearly lists tanos as a kind of smaragdus. He also adds that it came from Persia and was of an unsightly green color. His descriptive details seem to indicate some source other than the present passage of Theophrastus, unless the information given by Pliny was originally contained in this passage and dropped out later. This possibility is not at all unlikely, since almost all the other passages in this same section of Pliny's work are direct quotations from this part of the treatise. It is impossible to determine what was originally written in the lacuna before the letters ανων, and it is significant that De Laet made no
120 Origins and Development of Applied Chemistry, p. 132.
121 XXXVII, 74-75.
122 XXXVII, 65.
123 XXXVII, 74. The text reads: Inseritur smaragdis et quae vocatur tanos e Persis veniens gemma, ingrate viridis atque intus sordida.
