Corinth as one of the centers of white lead manufacture. Ancient specimens of white lead have been found in Attica and could probably be found elsewhere in Greece. Rhousopoulos427 mentions a specimen of white lead found in a grave not far from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens which he positively identifies as basic lead carbonate. This, in fact, appears to be the first identification of a specimen of ancient white lead by chemical analysis. At least two other specimens of white lead from graves in Attica have been identified chemically.428 Since some of these specimens of white lead date from as early as the fifdi century b.c, it is clear that the manufacture of this pigment began long before Theophrastus wrote about it.
The fact that white lead is found exclusively in the graves of women and girls and in a particular kind of closed bowl or toilet box shows that it was used as a cosmetic. This is amply confirmed by numerous allusions in the writings of classical authors. There are only a few artificially prepared chemical compounds that were known to the ancients, but this one is mentioned in their writings more often than any other. It is apparently first referred to by Xenophon;429 in a conversation with Socrates, Ischomachus remarks that, in instructing his wife on her duties, he discourages the use of white lead and other cosmetics because they displease him and are devices that are easily discovered. Similar allusions to the use of white lead as a cosmetic are made by Plautus,430 Ovid,431 and Martial.432 This, in fact, seems to have been the chief use of the product in ancient times, even though its poisonous nature was recognized, but it must be remarked in justice to the ancients that the use of poisonous substances in commercial cosmetic preparations is by no means unusual in modern times.
Pliny433 lists white lead among die paint pigments, but he states elsewhere434 that it was not suitable for moist fresco work, a statement which is correct from the chemical point of view, since
427 Diergart, Beitrage aus der Geschichte der Chemie dent Gedachtnis von Georg W. A. Kahlbaum, p. 193.
428 Classical Studies Presented to Edward Capps, p. 316; Caley, Hesperia, XIV (1945),
153-55·
429 Oeconomicus, X, 7. 430 Mostellaria, 258.
431 Medicamina faciei, 73. 432 Epigrammata, II, 41, 12; VII, 25, 2.
433 XXXV, 37.
434 XXXV, 49.
