Commentary

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	THEOPHRASTUS ON STONES

	eiirr).²²⁰ (And again they speak of stone in the feminine, not of stone in the masculine. ... At any rate, my custom is purposely to interchange the names, and to adopt both methods of describing everything of that sort, which some people argue about so unprofitably; for I show that in fact the clearness of the interpretation is not harmed at all, whichever way one describes them.) 31. kyanos. Theophrastus uses the word κυανός to designate two quite different types of material. In the present passage and in section 37, it evidently means a blue precious stone; but in sections 39, 40, 51, and especially 55, it is the name of certain natural or artificial substances that were used as blue pigments. There is also the stone called σάπφβφος, but the statements of Theophrastus in section 37 and the descriptions of Pliny²²¹ show that kyanos and sappheiros were simply varieties of the same mineral. Since the latter stone, as is explained in the notes on section 37, was almost certainly a variety of lapis lazuli, it is equally certain tnat the stone called J^yanos was also a variety of lapis lazuli; the difference apparently was that sappheiros was the name given to the mineral when it contained numerous scattered specks of iron pyrites, whereas kyanos was the name used for the stone of solid blue color, or at least the stone in which iron pyrites were not present in noticeable proportion. Lapis lazuli ordinarily contains various other impurities such as mica, calcite, amphibole, and diopside, in addition to the intense blue mineral, lazurite, a complex sodium aluminum sulfosilicate, which determines the color of the mixture as a whole. In proportion to its content of lazurite, the color of lapis lazuli varies from a very deep blue to a light or even greenish blue. Probably Theophrastus is referring to these differences in depth of color when he distinguishes the varieties of \yanos according to sex. Though he lists Ratios among the stones used for seals, lapis lazuli, which is frequently intersected by hard crystals formed of minerals other than lazurite, is not very suitable as a material for engraving, and its scarcity in modern collections of ancient engraved gems shows that it was not often used for ²²⁰ De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac jacultatibus, IX (Kiihn ed., XII, 194). ²²¹XXXVTI, rig.

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