which it had to be separated. Probably Theophrastus saw little or no difference between the mechanical refining process by which cinnabar was obtained from the crude material and the chemical processes by which the artificial blue or red pigments were produced.
Cinnabar, native mercury sulfide, is first mentioned as a particular kind of stone by Aristotle,445 but Theophrastus gives the earliest account of it in this section and in the two that follow. However, it was known and used by the Greeks long before the time of Aristotle and Theophrastus. When Rhousopoulos446 was investigating the pigments on some of the limestone statues of the sixth century b.c. in the Acropolis Museum at Athens, he found that a bright red pigment was native mercury sulfide, and that one of the dark pigments was the same substance altered by exposure to light. Rhousopoulos also found cinnabar present as a coloring material on lecythoi of the fifth century b.c. Traces of it were also found on part of the inside surface and the rim of a small black-glaze bowl of the late fifth century b.c. which was discovered in the excavations at the Athenian Agora.447 This was apparently a vessel in which the pigment had been mixed for painting. A scallop shell, probably of the diird century b.c, which was found in the same excavations contained a small amount of cinnabar and was evidently used for the same purpose. It is not unlikely that cinnabar was used in Asia Minor, and perhaps elsewhere, long before the time of the Greeks. The discovery of a very ancient cinnabar mine near Iconium, which contained stone hammers in the workings, seems to show the earlier use of cinnabar in Asia Minor.448 There is, however, no evidence of its use in ancient Egypt or in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia.
Though cinnabar is of rather frequent occurrence on Greek objects after the fifth century b.c, it appears to have been used much less frequently than the red iron oxide pigments. Because it was scarce, it was probably always more costly than these other red pigments and was therefore used more sparingly.
445 Meteorologica, III, 6, 378A (26).
446 Diergart, Beitrage aus der Geschichte der Chemic dem Gedachtnis von Georg W. A. Kahlbaum, pp. 180-81.
*47Caley, Hesperia, XIV (1945), 153. 448Gowland, Archaeologia, LXIX (1917-1918), 157.
