Commentary Page 165



	THEOPHRASTUS ON STONES

	There is an analogous passage in the pseudo-Aristotelian work De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus which is not at all ambiguous and suggests that the present interpretation is correct. This passage may be translated as follows: They say that the copper of the Mossynoeci is very brilliant and light in color, though tin is not mixed with it, but a kind of earth which occurs there is smelted with it. They say that the discoverer of the mixture did not instruct anyone else, so that the copper objects formerly produced in these regions are superior, whereas those made subsequently are no longer so.³⁵¹ In his Latin translation, which he attributed to Turnebus, Schneider recognized that the article ή referred to γη when he wrote: Singularis est propnetas terrae quae miscetur aeri.^SS2 Rossignol³⁵³ showed by a French translation of this particular passage that he also recognized it to have this meaning, and this was accepted without question by Rickard.³⁵⁴ Moreover, Mieleitner³" gives the same interpretation in his German translation. On the other hand, Mely³⁵⁶ follows the interpretation of Hill. It is probable that much of the confusion about the meaning of the passage arose because editors did not always recognize the place where Theophrastus begins a new topic. In the text as it has generally been printed, section 49 does not seem to begin at the right place, and in the present translation this has been corrected by starting a new paragraph within section 49. Many scholars have concluded that the passage just quoted from the De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus refers to the manufacture of brass by the calamine process, and both Rossignol and Rickard assume without question that Theophrastus is also referring to the manufacture of brass. This is improbable, even though the theory seems plausible. The two passages apparently refer to the same process, and both appear to contain a circum- ³⁵¹ Sec. 62. ³⁵² The actual words in the original translation of Turnebus are: Singularis est suaeque proprietatis quae miscetur aeri. Here the word terra does not appear. ³⁵³ Les Metaux dans VAntiquite, p. 254 (footnote). ³⁵⁴ Man and Metals, Vol. I, p. 157. ³⁶⁵ K. Mieleitner, Fortschritte der Mineralogie, Kristallographie und Petrologie, VII (1922), 440. ³⁵⁶ F. de Mely, Les Lapidaires de VAntiquite et du Moyen Age (Paris, 1902), Vol. Ill, fasc. 1, p. 8.

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