Commentary

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	COMMENTARY

	phrastus was practiced, in principle at least, more or less continuously from ancient times until a comparatively recent date. Indeed, the manufacture of an artificial red iron oxide pigment by roasting yellow ochre appears to have been the usual method for making such a pigment in European countries until it was first made on a large scale from the waste products of the iron and steel industry. Even at the present time, certain natural earths are roasted in preparing them for use as paint pigments. 55. There are three kinds of \yanos, the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Cyprian. It was explained in the notes on section 31 that κυανός was a general term denoting both a particular blue precious stone and various blue pigments. In the present section the word obviously refers only to pigments. Actually, as is shown by the results of archaeological excavation, only three stable blue pigments were known at the time of Theophrastus: two of these, azurite and lapis lazuli, were natural; and the third, blue frit, was artificial. The Cyprian \yanos was in all probability the native \yanos mentioned in section 39, and the same as the fyanos of the copper mines mentioned in section 52. If so, it must have been azurite, native blue copper carbonate, which is found in most copper mines and in the mineralized areas in their neighborhood. Dioscorides⁴⁰⁸states that \yanos was obtained from the copper mines of Cyprus and also from the sand that is found there in certain hollow places on the sea coast. The Cyprian blue pigment could not have been lapis lazuli, since this does not occur on Cyprus. Azurite for use as a pigment was also obtained from less important copper-mining regions, as is shown by the statements of other writers. For example, the author of De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus mentions⁴⁰⁹a mine of \yanos on Demonesos, the island of the Chalcedonians. This island was probably the modern Khalki, one of the Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmora, where there are copper minerals and traces of ancient mining operations. The Egyptian \yanos was undoubtedly the well-known Egyptian blue frit. By elimination, therefore, the Scythian \yanos may be identified as powdered lapis lazuli. This identification receives support from the very ⁴⁰⁸ V, 106 (Wellmann ed., V, 91). *»⁹ Sec. 58.

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