practice the pigment was sorted into four grades, either because this provided a sufficient variety of shades of blue or because with a larger number of shades it would not be easy to distinguish a particular shade from the one next to it. Theophrastus is correct when he says that the finest pigment was pale and the coarsest was very dark. However, in any process of grinding where the finest is described as the first, strictly speaking the coarsest should be described as the last and not the second, as Theophrastus states. This passage is of considerable interest, as Theophrastus is the first to observe the relation between the color of a vitreous or crystalline material and the size of its particles.
The emendation λενκότατον ("very white," "pale") has been accepted in the text instead of λεπτότατοι, which appears in the manuscripts. Turnebus accepted λευκότατοι, and was followed by some editors, but Schneider and Wimmer preferred to keep the more difficult reading. It seems probable that the copyist simply made a mistake and wrote λεπτότατον because he had just written λεπτότατων. Theophrastus is talking about colors, and a word meaning "very pale" is clearly needed to correspond with μβλάντατον, which means "very dark." Since a literal translation of λεπτότατοι» would be unsuitable, it seems better to accept the emendation λευκότατοι' in the text.
56. white lead. It has generally been assumed that the word φιμνθιον always meant the basic carbonate of lead commonly known as white lead, but Bailey420 has recently identified the psimythion of the Greeks and the corresponding cerussa of the Romans as normal or basic lead acetate. However, if attention is paid to the ancient authors who discuss the products derived from lead by the corrosive action of vinegar, it seems certain that these terms were general ones that included both soluble lead acetate and insoluble lead carbonate, and that the particular product depended upon the details of the procedure. According to the procedure described by Theophrastus, the product was washed by decantation, which shows that it must have been insoluble in water and was therefore the carbonate and not the acetate. Bailey and other commentators
420 The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects, Part II, p. 204.
