great Ionian coastal city of Ephesos has been proved by modern geological exploration. The deposit is located about 65 kilometers southwest of Smyrna, less than 50 kilometers directly inland from the site of Ephesos.454 Here cinnabar is found scattered through slate and quartz in a vein 15 to 25 meters wide, but the deposit is not considered worth working at the present time. This statement of Theophrastus agrees with the statements of Vitruvius which indicate that the cinnabar mines near Ephesos were finally worked out, so tJiat mining was no longer profitable.
The phrase μικρόν kv καλοί?, which appears in the text, has not been translated. Schneider thought that it concealed the name of the region mentioned by Vitruvius and Pliny where the Ephesians obtained their cinnabar. Pliny's statement is especially significant, because in the section of his work in which it appears he has apparently taken all his information about cinnabar directly from this part of the treatise On Stones. His words are as follows: optimum vero supra Ephesum Cilbianis agris, harena cocci colorem habente455 (the best comes from the Cilbian district above Ephesus, where the sand has the color of scarlet dye). However, it is not at all unlikely that Pliny may have taken his information about the agri Cilbiani from the statement of Vitruvius.456
If the phrase μικρόν kv καλοί? is in its right position in the text, it ought to refer to the refining operation and not to the place from which the cinnabar came. If it refers to the place, it should follow wrep Έφεσον ("above Ephesos"), where the word μικρόν also occurs. The second μικρόν would then be an incorrect repetition of the first, and kv καλοΐς, as Schneider suggested, would be a mistake for kv αγροί? Κιλβιανοΐς. As it stands in the text, it is impossible to translate it. It was rightly bracketed by Schneider, and Wimmer thought it might be a repetition of kv χαλκοί? ("in copper vessels"), which comes immediately before it in the text.
58. The washing is done from the top, and separate portions are wetted one after the other; what is left at the
454 Schmeiszer, Zeitschrijt fiir prakfische Geologic, XIV (1906), 191. «'ΧΧΧΙΠ, 114. «evil, 8, 1.
