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COMMENTARY
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followed him in his change of the text.349 Stillman, for example, criticizes Hill for changing the text and gives the following translation: "But most peculiar is that (glass) which is mixed with copper, for in addition to the melting and mixing, it has the additional property of causing a beautiful difference in color." Stillman considers this passage to be of historical importance as the first reference in literature to the coloring of glass with copper. His interpretation of the passage is plausible, since the intentional coloring of glass with copper was evidently a very common practice in ancient times, as is shown by the results of many modern analyses of ancient colored glasses. Though it would seem more likely that the copper was added in the form of an oxide or of certain copper minerals such as malachite, it is clear from a statement in Pliny that it actually was used in ancient glass manufacture. After remarking that the restless ingenuity of man was not long content to make glass from sand and soda alone, Pliny names various ingredients that were added and then says: levibus autem aridisque lignis coquitur, addito cypro ac nitro, maxime Aegyptio. continuis jornacibus ut aes liquatur massaeque fiuni colore pingui nigricantes.350 (A fire of light, dry wood is used, and copper and soda, especially the Egyptian kind, are added. The smelting is done, like that of copper, in a series of furnaces. Dark masses of a rich color are obtained.) Evidently the copper was oxidized rapidly enough in such a process to change it more or less completely into oxide which combined with the silica. Stillman's interpretation is therefore not only possible but very plausible.
It is unlikely, however, that the feminine article refers to glass, for the word νβλος (another form of ναλος) is masculine in the preceding sentence. Since the word is usually feminine, it is possible that the masculine article 6 is a textual error, but there is no evidence for this. The word νβλΐτις ("vitreous earth"), which occurs in the same sentence, is feminine, but it is unlikely that the article ή refers to this. It is most probable that it refers to the word γη ("earth") in the sentence beginning with the words αί δβ τη? γη? in section 48.
349 Cf. Lenz, Mineralogie der alien Griechen und Romer, p. 24; Bliimner, Technologic und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste bet Griechen und Romern, Vol. IV, p. 390; Stillman, The Story of Early Chemistry, p. 21.
350 XXXVI, 193.
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