(Moreover, in each kind the more brilliant are called male and those that shine with a fainter light are called female.) He also makes a similar statement about sandastros.21s In discussing sarda, whose varieties Theophrastus distinguishes only by their color and transparency, Pliny has this to say: et in his autem mares excitatius fulgent, feminae pigriores et crassius nitent.219 (Among these stones, too, the males glow more brightly, but the females are rather dull and shine with a dimmer light.) It will be seen, therefore, that according to this ancient concept of sex all stones of a certain type whose characteristic properties were more pronounced were called male, and those whose properties were less pronounced were called female. Though Theophrastus is apparently the earliest known writer to use this concept, his phraseology indicates that he did not invent it but merely incorporated it into his treatise as a method of distinction commonly understood in his day.
Theophrastus also varies the grammatical gender of the word used for stone, which sometimes appears as ό λίθος and sometimes as η λίθος. Although the occurrence of this word in the treatise has been carefully studied, no clear distinction in meaning between the two genders has been found, and the problem is not solved by the suggestion in Liddell and Scott's lexicon that the feminine usually applies to some special stone. What is probably near the truth is that the grammatical gender of the word was unsettled in the early formative period of the language, so that the word was used in either gender interchangeably. Efforts were later made to straighten out the confusion by assigning special meanings to each gender. Galen shows that the argument not only concerned the word λίθος but extended also to ό πέτρος and η πέτρα, the term used for hard stones and rocks; he points out the futility of the attempted distinctions and shows his impatience in the following words: Ζμπαλιν δε την πετραν λέγονσιν θηλνκώς, ον top πίτρον άρρενικώς. . . . εγώ γονν εξεπίτη8ες εΐωθα, μεταβάλλων τά ονόματα, λέγειν εκατέρως άπαντα τα τοιαύτα, περί ων άχρηστως έρίζονσιν ενιοι, δεικννς έργω μη8εν βλατττομένην την σαφηνειαν της ερμηνείας, όιτοτέρως αν τις
218 XXXVII, ιοί.
219 XXXVII, ιο6.
