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COMMENTARY
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58. The cinnabar in Iberia, which is very hard and stony, is natural, and so is the \ind found in Colchis. Pliny,449 who is quoting from Theophrastus at this point, translates the Greek place name Ίβηρίαν (Iberia) as Hispania (Spain), and those who have commented on this passage in the Natural History seem to have assumed generally that Pliny was correct in his translation. Hill450 and others after him also translated this place name in the same way; apparently tliey accepted Pliny's interpretation and knew of the rich cinnabar deposits in Spain that had been exploited as far back as Roman times. Lenz451 seems to have assumed without question that Spain is the locality to which Theophrastus refers. But it is actually very doubtful whether the cinnabar deposits on the Iberian Peninsula were known, except perhaps locally, as early as the time of Theophrastus, and still more doubtful whether the Greeks obtained cinnabar from that source. The following statements of Vitruvius are important, since they suggest a later time for the discovery, or at least the foreign exploitation, of the cinnabar deposits in Spain:
It is said that it was first found in the Cilbian districts belonging to the Ephesians .... However, the workshops which were once at the mines of the Ephesians have now been transferred to Rome, because this kind of ore was later discovered in certain districts of Spain. The lumps of ore are brought from the mines there and treated in Rome by public contractors.452
From these statements it seems evident that the deposits in Spain were exploited later than those near Ephesos, possibly only after the latter could no longer be worked profitably. Since, according to this account of Theophrastus, the deposits near Ephesos were being worked at the same time as those in the country he calls Iberia, it follows that this Iberia could not have been Spain,
449XXXIII, 114.
450 Theophrastufs History of Stones, p. 137.
451 Mineralogie der alten Griechen und Romer, p. 26.
452 VII, 8, i, and VII, 9, 4. The text reads: "id autem agris Ephesiorum Cilbianis primum esse memoratur inventum . . . quae autem in Ephesiorum metallis fuerunt officinae, nunc traiectae sunt idea Romam quod id genus venae postea est inventum Hispaniae regionibus, /e\ quibus metallis glaebae portantur et per publicanos Romae curantur."
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