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COMMENTARY
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Gulf, and along the coasts of India.250 In Herodotus the Red Sea (Έρνθρη θάλασσα) meant the Indian Ocean, in which the Arabian Gulf (Άράβιος κόλπος), now known as the Red Sea, was sometimes included. Later the term was also used for the Persian Gulf, e.g., in Diodorus (II, n), and probably that is the meaning here.
37. But there are some others. In this section Theophrastus mentions certain dull opaque ornamental stones. Sappheiros has already been listed twice (sees. 8 and 23) along with valuable stones, but the closing sentence of section 36 indicates that the other materials mentioned in this present section were rather common and not highly valued.
37. fossil ivory which is variegated with white and dar\ markings.
Though ορυκτός really means "dug up" rather than "fossil" in the usual modern sense, it would seem that both meanings are equally applicable in this case, for the material was apparently derived from the tusks, teeth, or, less probably, the bones of fossil animals. Possibly this even refers to ivory in the strict sense of the term, for the story of Pliny251 about elephants burying their tusks seems to imply that the ancients recovered some ivory from the ground, though it is more likely that they dug up the tusks of mammoths and mastodons and that this was the real basis of Pliny's statement. Even in modern times a considerable amount of so-called ivory has been obtained from such fossil remains, particularly in Russia. The allusion to the mottled dark-and-white appearance of the material is readily understandable, since fossil tusks or teeth are often partly discolored by mineral or organic matter. Hill252 pointed out that the word μέλανι in this passage does not necessarily mean "black," which is its most common meaning; for the same word is used immediately afterwards with reference to sappheiros, where the meaning is clearly "dark" in the sense of "dark blue." He therefore suggested that the meaning in this passage might also be "dark blue" and that the so-called
250 E. H. Kraus and E. F. Holden, Gems and Gem Materials (New York, 1925), p. 184.
251 VIII, 7. 252 Theophrastus's History of Stones, pp. 94-95.
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