Commentary Page 178



	COMMENTARY

	evidence at this place. The presence of black-glaze sherds near the site affords a clue to the date of the workings. Caves in the brown ironstone on the northeast coast may, however, have been the site of the principal ancient workings. Some interesting evidence concerning the ancient mining of red ochre on Ceos is given by an inscription belonging to the fourth century b.c. which records an agreement between Athens and Ceos for regulating the export of red ochre from the island; the terms provided that this could not be exported except to Athens and could be sent only on an authorized vessel.³⁹⁰ 52. iron mines also contain red ochre. This shows clearly enough that the term μίλτος was applied to earthy hematite containing a high proportion of ferric oxide as well as to red ochre in the modern sense. Midgley³⁹¹ found 48 per cent of ferric oxide in a deep red pigment taken from a terra cotta object discovered in the excavations at Athens. This is a high enough proportion to class the pigment as an iron ore. A brownish-red pigment found in the bottom of a broken vessel discovered in the Athenian Agora has been identified as earthy hematite. 52. the Lemnian \ind. Lemnos, a fairly large island in the northern Aegean Sea, midway between Mt. Athos and the Hellespont, is still known locally as the source of a particular kind of medicinal earth. The accounts of Pliny and Dioscorides suggest that the red ochre of Lemnos was the same as the famous medicinal earth of that island, tfiough it is very doubtful that this is true. Pliny³⁹² mentions Lemnian rubrica as a pigment that was regarded by some authorities as the best of the red ochres, inferior only to cinnabar. But he goes on to say that every piece sold was officially sealed, and for this reason the name sphragis was given to it. These statements seem to identify this variety of red ochre as the Lemnian medicinal earth, since this is known to have been prepared in the form of tablets ³⁹⁰ Inscriptiones Graecae, Vol. II, Part I, No. 546. See also M.N.Tod, A Selection of Greek. Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1948), Vol. II, No. 162, pp. 181 ff. ⁸⁸¹ "Chemical Analysis of Ancient Athenian Pigments," p. 14. a»² XXXV, 33.

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