accusative of σφύρα ("a hammer"). Schneider suggested "Αστυρα, which is close to the manuscript reading. This form is the accusative neuter plural. Astyra was a town in the Troad, inland from Lampsakos, and there was another place of the same name near Antandros in Mysia.
Professor Gilbert Highet suggests that Srareipav should be read. This would mean that the stone was carved into a portrait of Stateira, who was the wife of Alexander the Great.233 According to this interpretation, άνβνεχθείσης would mean "when the stone had been brought up from tiie mine."
32. the King.
That the king was Alexander the Great is indicated by a passage in Pliny which reads as follows: Gemmae nascuntur et repente novae ac sine nominibus, sicut olim in metallis aurariis Lampsaci unam inventam, quae propter pulchritudinem Alexandre regi missa sit, auctor est Theophrastus?** (New gems which have no names are also produced unexpectedly; for example, Theophrastus reports that a stone was once found in the gold mines at Lampsacus which was sent to King Alexander on account of its beauty.) However, it is not certain that Theophrastus does mean Alexander; Pliny may have added the name on his own authority.
33. anthrakjon.
Since ανθράκων is evidently a diminutive of ανθραξ, Hill235 and later commentators236 thought that it might be the name of an inferior kind of garnet, but the hints that Theophrastus gives about the nature of the stone do not support this identification. In the notes on section 18 it was pointed out that the word anthrax meant originally a glowing live coal, and was applied later to stones of a similar red color; but since this word was also used to denote charcoal, it is equally reasonable to believe that the derived form anthrakion was one applied to very dark or black stones. The statements made by Theophrastus agree with this interpretation, for the anthrakion found at Orchomenos is described as darker than another kind called the Chian, and this
233 Plutarch, Vitae, Alexander, LXX. 23i XXXVII, 193.
235 Theophrastus's History of Stones, pp. 88-89.
236 E.g., Moore, Ancient Mineralogy, p. 208.
