elsewhere. Salmasius suggested Ψφώ as an emendation, and Hill adopted this but printed it incorrectly as Ψηβώ.243 Psebo is a place mentioned by Strabo244 in his description of Ethiopia as a large lake containing a populous island. Here the word appears in the nominative as Ψφώ (Psebo). The modern name is Lake Tana, and the large island in it is called Dek Island. Possibly in ancient times this island or certain surrounding territory took the name of the lake, and it is to one or both of these that Theophrastus makes reference.
35. Bactriana. An alternative translation is Bactria, the more usual name for this extensive ancient country. Though its boundaries are not entirely certain, it lay north of the Hindu Kush range, and most of it was between this mountain range and the Oxus River.
Previous commentators have generally assumed that these stones collected for mosaics were stnaragdoi. Though it is true that smaragdos is mentioned in the first sentence of this section, they probably made this assumption because Pliny246 says the smaragdus of Bactriana was found in essentially the same manner as the stones that are mentioned here. However, Pliny appears to have obtained his information from this very passage in Theophrastus, and in making his own version he introduced this mistake in identification. Pliny made a similar mistake when he supposed that the stones mentioned in section 33 of this treatise were varieties of the carbunculus. Clear evidence that he often misinterpreted the Greek of Theophrastus, or at least sometimes distorted his quotations, is contained in Book XXXVI, section 156, of the Natural History, where, after naming his authority, he gives a quite inaccurate version of a passage in the History of Plants. Bailey246 discusses this particular case in detail. Apart from this statement of Pliny, which is found to be wrong, there is no reason for supposing that these stones found in the desert were smaragdo't.
There is nothing inherently improbable about the way in which the stones are said to have been found, since the sorting
zi3Ibid., p. 90; C. Salmasius, Plinianae Exercitationes (Utrecht, 1689), 269 a G.
2" XVII, 2, 3.
2« XXXVII, 65.
246 The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects, Part II, p. 265.
