64. In Phoenicia and Syria it is made by burning stones, and this also happens in Thourioi.
Here the material is obviously not a natural mineral substance, and the information given by Theophrastus in section 69 identifies it with certainty as quicklime. For further comments see the notes on section 69.
Thourioi was a city of Magna Graecia on the Tarentine Gulf in southern Italy.
64. it occurs in Tymphaia and in Perrhaibia.
It has already been shown that the kind of earth or gypsos that occurred in Tymphaia, a district in northern Epirus, was probably earthy gypsum or chalk. Since Perrhaibia was a neighboring district in northern Thessaly, it is likely that the same mineral occurred there.
65. Its nature is peculiar; for it is more li\e stone than earth, and the stone resembles alabastrites. It is not cut out
in a large mass but in small pieces.
Alabastrites was the name specifically applied to Egyptian onyx marble, as is explained in the notes on section 6; at the present time this is sometimes called "oriental alabaster" to distinguish it from ordinary alabaster, which is a form of gypsum. Since it closely resembles Egyptian onyx marble in appearance, it seems probable that the mineral substance which Theophrastus mentions here was in fact this particular variety of gypsum. At any rate, the allusion is certainly to natural gypsum, not to the dehydrated mineral or to any other sort of artificial product.
65. Its stickiness and heat, when it is wet, are remarkable.
There seems to be an inconsistency here. Since no natural mineral substance generates heat to an appreciable extent on being treated with water, it looks as if Theophrastus were now describing an artificial mineral product. The preceding passage suggests that it was partly dehydrated gypsum, but from what follows it seems to have been quicklime. Such inconsistencies not only indicate that different substances were included under the term gypsos but
