nal plates, often grouped in fan-shaped forms {aster), but more often as a clay-like mass, white, grey, or yellow (collyrium) ."504 Dioscorides605 indicates that the variety called aster had a lamellar structure, which tends to support the identification suggested by Bailey. It is also possible that the name was used in a metaphorical sense to denote the best variety of Samian earth, which was taken from the middle of the vein. Though some of these explanations are plausible enough, it is impossible to determine with certainty how this name originated.
64. This earth is used mainly or solely for clothes. Theophrastus is the only ancient writer who mentions that Samian earth was used for cleaning or whitening clothes. If this earth was kaolin, as seems probable, it could have hidden the dirt on the surface but not bleached the cloth or actually removed much dirt.
64. The Tymphaic earth is also used for clothes and is called gypsos by the people who live near Mt. Athos and those districts.
Tymphaic earth, which was discussed in the notes on section 62, was probably earthy gypsum or chalk, and this may have had the same effect as Samian earth when it was used on clothes; for the material would be impregnated with fine particles of white pigment and 50 would appear to be clean.
Mt. Athos, which is also known today as the Holy Mountain because of its monasteries, is the most eastern of the three promontories that form the Chalcidic peninsula in the Northern Aegean.
64. Gypsos occurs in large quantities in Cyprus and can easily be seen; for only a little soil is removed when it is dug up.
Here the term gypsos seems to mean native gypsum. This mineral, some of it in the form of alabaster, is abundant in several places on the island of Cyprus, and at present both untreated gypsum and plaster of Paris are important exports from the island. Sometimes this term denoted alabaster, as is indicated in the notes on section 65.
504 The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects, Part II, p. 240. S°5V, 171 (Wellmann ed., V, 153).
