Few attempts have been made to identify the stones from Troezen and Corinth which also came from the Peloponnesus. One suggestion is that diey were varieties of anthra\ta and therefore inferior kinds of garnet. Neither the general sense of the passage nor the remarks on die appearance of the stones support this interpretation, which may also be due to the careless quotation of Pliny. It seems far more likely that the stones from Troezen and CorintJi were not anthra\ia at all, but some other stones of attractive appearance. From the imperfect descriptions given by Theophrastus it is difficult to determine specifically what the stones were, but probably they were certain kinds of variegated quartz, such as colored jaspers, which are not uncommon in the general region around these two places.
34. the remarkable ones are rare and come from a few places.
Hill242 in his translation assumes that Theophrastus is speaking here of places from which the more valuable kinds of garnets were obtained, but he seems to have misunderstood the real meaning of this section as well as the preceding one. Actually, Theophrastus is simply mentioning certain important foreign localities from which the more valuable kinds of precious stones were obtained.
34. Syene near the city of Elephantine. Syene was situated on the east bank of the Nile just below the First Cataract. The site is now occupied by the town of Aswan. Elephantine was a city directly opposite on the southern end of the island of the same name. Though this district was known as the source of an inexhaustible supply of building stone, principally granite, there is no evidence that precious stones were ever found in the immediate vicinity of the two cities. Therefore, it would appear that Theophrastus is speaking of these places only as exporting points for precious stones that were found elsewhere in the country. Carthage and Massalia, mentioned just previously, are apparently referred to in the same way.
34. Psepho. The name Ψβφώ, which is used here as a genitive, is not found
2i2Theophrastus's History of Stones, pp. 89, 91.
