Natural History — Book XXXIII

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| Now metals will be spoken of, and wealth itself, and the prices of things, as our industry searches the inside of the earth in many ways. In one place she is dug for riches, as life seeks gold, silver, electrum and copper; in another for luxury, seeking gems and pigments for walls and woodwork; in another for recklessness, seeking iron, which amid wars and slaughter is even more welcome than gold. We follow up all her veins and live on top of the earth we have hollowed out, and then wonder that she sometimes gapes open or trembles, as if this could not truly be wrung from the indignation of our sacred mother.

2| We go into her entrails and seek wealth in the abode of the dead, as though she were not kind and fruitful enough where she is trodden underfoot. And among all this, very little of our searching is for the sake of remedies; for how few dig for the sake of medicine? And yet this too she has given on her uppermost surface, like the crops, generous and easy in all the things that do us good.

3| It is the things she has hidden and sunk deep that destroy us, that drive us down to the underworld: things that are not produced in a moment, so that the mind, flying out into the void, may reckon what end there will ever be, through all the ages, to draining her, and how far greed will burrow. How innocent, how happy, indeed how even refined life would be, if it desired nothing from anywhere but above the earth, and, in short, nothing but what lies at hand!

4| Gold is dug out, and next to it chrysocolla, which keeps a name taken from gold so that it may seem the more precious. For it was not enough to have found one bane of life unless even the pus of gold were also prized. Greed was seeking silver; in the meantime it was glad to have found minium, and thought up a use for a red earth. Alas, for our prodigal ingenuity: in how many ways we have raised the prices of things! The art of painting was added, and by engraving we have made gold and silver dearer. Man has learned to challenge nature. The incitements of vice have increased the arts as well: it has pleased us to engrave lusts on our cups and to drink through obscenities.

5| Then these things were thrown aside and began to look shabby, when there was too much gold and silver. From the same earth we have dug out murrina and crystallina, whose very fragility gives them their price. It was thought the proof of wealth and the true glory of luxury to own something that could perish entirely in an instant. Nor was this enough. We drink from a crowd of gems and encrust our cups with zmaragdi, and to get drunk we like to hold India in our hands. Gold is now a mere accessory,

6| and would that it could be banished from life altogether [accursed by hunger, as the most celebrated writers have said], reviled with abuse by all the best men and discovered for the ruin of life. How much happier was the time when goods themselves were exchanged one for another, as we should believe was done even in Trojan times, on the word of Homer! For this, I think, is how trade was introduced, for the sake of a living.

7| He records that some bought goods with ox hides, others with iron and captives. And so, although he himself already admired gold, he valued things in cattle, saying that Glaucus exchanged golden armor worth 100 oxen for Diomedes' armor worth 9 oxen. From this custom, even at Rome, many of the fines in the ancient laws are reckoned in cattle.

8| The worst crime against life was committed by the man who first put gold on his fingers, and who did so is not recorded. For I consider everything about Prometheus to be fable, although antiquity gave him too an iron ring and meant it to be understood as a chain, not as an ornament. As for the ring of Midas, which, when turned round, made its wearer invisible to everyone, who would not admit that it is even more fabulous?

9| It was hands, and in fact left hands, that won gold its greatest prestige; not Roman hands, however, for it was the Roman custom to wear iron rings, as a mark of valor in war. About the Roman kings I could not easily say. The statue of Romulus on the Capitol has none, and none of the others has one apart from those of Numa and Servius Tullius, not even that of Lucius Brutus. This surprises me most in the case of the Tarquins, whose family came from Greece, the source of this use of rings, although even now at Lacedaemon they wear an iron one.

10| But it is established that Tarquinius Priscus, first of all men, presented his son with a golden bulla when he had killed an enemy while still of an age to wear the toga praetexta; and from this the custom of the bulla has lasted, so that the sons of those who had served in the cavalry wear it as a mark of distinction, and the rest a leather strap. And so I am surprised that the statue of that Tarquin is without a ring. Though I see that there is doubt even about the name itself. The Greeks named it from the fingers; among us the ancients called it ungulus, and later both the Greeks and our own people called it symbolum.

11| It is certainly clear that for a long time not even the Roman senate had gold rings, since rings were given at public expense only to those who were to go as envoys to foreign nations, because, I suppose, that was how the most honored men were recognized among foreigners. Nor was it the custom for anyone to wear them except those who had received them at public expense for that reason; and generally men celebrated their triumphs in this way: though an Etruscan crown of gold was held up behind the general, the ring on his finger was nevertheless of iron, for the triumphing general and for the slave holding the crown over him alike.

12| So Gaius Marius triumphed over Jugurtha, and it is reported that he did not take a gold ring before his third consulship. Those also who had been given gold rings on account of an embassy wore them only in public, and at home wore iron ones; and as evidence of this, even now an iron ring, and that without a gem, is sent to a betrothed girl as a gift. For my part I see that there were no rings even in the times of Ilium. Homer at any rate nowhere mentions them, although he tells that tablets were sent about for the sake of letters, and that garments and vessels of gold and silver were stored away in chests and were tied up with the mark of a knot, not of a ring. He tells that leaders drew lots against challenges not with rings, and that the workshops of the gods made brooches and other things of women's adornment, such as earrings, in the beginning, with no mention of rings.

13| And whoever first established the custom did so hesitantly: he put it on the left hand and kept it hidden, when, if the honor had been secure, it should have been displayed on the right. But if any impediment could be understood in this, that too would be proof of a later use: it would have been greater on the left, with which the shield is held. There is indeed in the same Homer gold plaited into the hair of men; therefore I do not know whether the earlier use began with women.

14| At Rome there was not even any gold, except a very small amount, for a long time. Certainly when the city had fallen to the Gauls and peace was being bought, not more than a thousand pounds could be produced. Nor am I unaware that 2,000 pounds of gold perished in the third consulship of Pompey from the throne of Capitoline Jupiter, placed there by Camillus, and that for this reason most think 2,000 pounds were collected. But what was added came from the booty of the Gauls and was taken by them from part of

15| the shrines of the captured city — that the Gauls were accustomed to fight with gold, Torquatus is evidence; so it is clear that there was only that much of the gold of the Gauls and of the temples, and no more. This was indeed understood in a divination, when the Capitoline had given back twice as much. It is also fitting to point out in passing — we have returned to our discussion of rings as well — that a warden of the temple, caught in charge of it, broke the gem of his ring in his mouth and died at once, and so the evidence was destroyed.

16| So even granting that there were only 2,000 pounds at the time Rome was captured, in the year 364, when already 152,573 free persons had been counted in the census, in that same city 307 years later what Gaius Marius the son had brought to Praeneste from the burning of the Capitoline temple and from all the other shrines was 14,000 pounds, which under that label Sulla carried over in his triumph, and 6,000 of silver. The same man had carried over the day before, from all the rest of the victory, 15,000 pounds of gold and 115,000 pounds of silver.

17| A more frequent use of rings, however, is not found before Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius. For when he had made public the calendar of days, which the people used to ask each day of a few of the leading men, he gained so much favor with the plebs — he was born of a freedman father, and was himself secretary to Appius Caecus, at whose urging he had taken down those days by constant consulting with his sharp mind and had published them — that he was elected curule aedile together with Quintus Anicius of Praeneste, who had been an enemy a few years earlier, Gaius Poetilius and Domitius, whose fathers had been consuls, being passed over.

18| It was added in Flavius's case that he was also tribune of the plebs at the same time, and when this was done, so great an indignation blazed up that rings were thrown away, as is found in the oldest annals. Most people are mistaken in thinking that the equestrian order too did this at that time; for this too was added, but phalerae were also laid aside, and for that reason the name of the knights was added, and it was recorded in the annals that rings were set aside by the nobility, not by the senate as a whole. This was done in the consulship of Publius Sempronius and Lucius Sulpicius.

19| Flavius vowed a temple of Concord if he should reconcile the orders to the people, and when money was not decreed for it from public funds, he made a little bronze shrine in the Graecostasis, which was then above the comitium, out of fines levied on moneylenders who had been condemned, and he inscribed on a bronze tablet that this temple was made 204 years after the dedication of the Capitoline.

20| This was done in the year 449 since the city was founded, and it is the first trace of rings that exists; a second trace of their promiscuous use is in the second Punic war, for otherwise that three-modius measure of rings could not have been sent to Carthage by Hannibal. Between Caepio and Drusus too enmity began over a ring put up for sale at an auction, whence the origin of the Social War and the ruin of affairs.

21| Not even then did all senators have them, inasmuch as within the memory of our grandfathers many, even ones who had held the praetorship, grew old with an iron ring — as Fenestella reports of Calpurnius and Manilius, who had been a legate of Gaius Marius in the Jugurthine war, and many of that Lucius Fufidius to whom Scaurus wrote about his life — while in the family of the Quinctii it was the custom that not even the women had gold, and the greater part of peoples and men, even those who live under our rule, have none at all today. The East does not seal, nor does Egypt even now, content with letters alone.

22| In many ways, as with everything else, luxury has varied this, by adding gems of choice brilliance and loading the fingers with rich fortunes, as we shall say shortly in the volume on gems, and by engraving various likenesses so that in one place the art, in another the material, is the thing prized. Then it judged it a sin that other gems should be damaged, and, so that no one should think they were on the rings for the sake of sealing, it put them on solid.

23| Some gems indeed it has not enclosed in gold even on the side where they are hidden by the finger, and it has made gold cheaper than [….] of little stones. On the contrary, many admit no gems at all and seal with the gold itself. This was invented in the principate of Claudius Caesar. And now even slaves surround iron with gold — others adorn rings by themselves with pure gold — and the origin of this license is declared by the very name, which shows that the practice was established in Samothrace.

24| At first it had been the custom to wear one ring on a single finger, the one next to the smallest. So we see it in the statues of Numa and of Servius Tullius. Afterwards they put it on the finger beside the thumb, even on images of the gods; then they took pleasure in giving it to the smallest finger too. The Gauls and Britons are said to have used the middle one. This one alone is now exempted, all the others are loaded, and even privately the joints with other smaller rings.

25| There are some who heap them on the smallest finger only, but others, even for this finger, put only one, with which they seal up their signet ring. That ring, stored away as a rare thing and unworthy to suffer wear, is brought out as if from a shrine, so that even to have had one ring on the little finger is a display of more precious furnishings kept in store. Now others show off the weights of their rings. For some it is a labor to carry more than one; others think it safer, for anxiety about the gems, to stuff foils with a lighter material against a fall; others enclose poisons under the gems, as Demosthenes, the greatest orator of Greece, did, and keep rings for the sake of death.

26| Finally, even the greatest crimes of wealth are done by rings. What a life that was of the ancients, what innocence, in which nothing was sealed! Now even food and drink are protected from plunder by a ring. This is what the legions of slaves have brought about, a foreign crowd in the house, and now a nomenclator has to be employed even on account of the slaves. It was otherwise among the ancients: single Marcipors or Lucipors, clansmen of their masters, had all their food in common, and there was no need at home for any guarding by the household.

27| Now banquets are prepared to be plundered, and also those who will plunder them, and to have sealed the very keys is not enough. Rings are pulled from people weighed down with sleep or dying, and a greater reckoning of life has begun to attach to this instrument. It is uncertain from what time; yet we seem able to grasp the authority of the matter among foreigners in the case of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, whose beloved ring was thrown into the sea and was brought back when a fish had been caught, he himself being killed about the year 230 of our city. A more frequent use must have begun with moneylending.

28| The evidence is the custom of the common people, who even now let the ring spring out at pledges, drawn from that time when there was not yet a quicker pledge, so that we can state plainly that coins began among us first, then rings. About coins it will be spoken a little later.

29| Rings marked off a second order from the plebs, once they had begun to be common, just as the tunic marked off the senate from the rings. Although this too came late, and we find that even heralds commonly used a broader purple on the tunic, as did the father of Lucius Aelius Stilo, who was surnamed Praeconinus for that reason. But rings clearly inserted a third order, in the middle between the plebs and the fathers, and what military horses had formerly given as a name, those who now declare their fortune bestow. Nor was this done long ago.

30| When the deified Augustus was arranging the decuries, the greater part of the judges wore an iron ring, and they were called not knights but judges. The name of knights was left in the squadrons of public horses. Of judges, too, there were at first no more than four decuries, and scarcely a thousand each were found in the decuries, the provinces not yet being admitted to this duty; and it has been kept to this day that none of the new citizens should judge in them.

31| The decuries themselves were also divided under several names: of tribunes of the treasury, of selected men, and of judges. Besides these, nine hundred still were called, chosen from all, to guard the voting urns at the elections. And this order too was divided by a proud usurpation of names, when one named himself among the nine hundred, another among the selected, another a tribune.

32| Only in the ninth year of the principate of Tiberius did the equestrian order come into unity, and a form was established for the authority of rings, in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Pollio and Gaius Antistius Vetus, in the year 775 since the founding of the city, for a cause, which we may wonder at, almost trifling, when Gaius Sulpicius Galba, hunting a youthful reputation with the emperor by punishments of eating-houses, complained in the senate that hucksters guilty of that offence were commonly shielded by their rings. For this reason it was established that no one should have the right unless he himself was freeborn, and his father and paternal grandfather had been rated at 400,000 sesterces and had sat in the fourteen rows by the Julian theatre law. Afterwards this badge began to be sought in crowds.

33| On account of these distinctions the emperor Gaius added a fifth decury, and so much pride grew up that decuries which under the deified Augustus could not be filled cannot hold this order, and even those freed from slavery leap in all directions to these ornaments, which had never been done before, since knights and judges were recognized by the iron ring. And this began to be so indiscriminate that before Claudius Caesar, in his censorship, one of the knights, Flavius Proculus, brought 400 defendants to trial on that ground. Thus while the order was separated from the freeborn, it was shared with slaves.

34| The Gracchi, however, were the first of all to set this order apart under the title of judges, in a divisive popular politics aimed at insulting the senate; soon, once the authority of the name had been overcome, with varying outcome of the seditions, it came to rest around the tax-farmers, and for some time men of a third rank were the tax-farmers. Marcus Cicero at last established the equestrian name, in his consulship, in the affair of Catiline, glorying that he had come from that order and seeking its strength by a peculiar popular appeal. From that time this third body clearly became part of the commonwealth, and the equestrian order began to be added to the senate and the Roman people. For this reason even now it is written after the people, because it began last to be added.

35| The very name of the knights, indeed, has often been varied, even among those who drew it from the cavalry. Under Romulus and the kings they were called celeres, then flexuntes, afterwards trossuli, when they had taken, without any help from foot soldiers, a town of that name in Etruria, 9,000 paces this side of Volsinii; and that name lasted beyond Gaius Gracchus.

36| Junius, at any rate, who was called Gracchanus from his friendship with him, left it written in these words: As far as the equestrian order is concerned, they used formerly to call them trossuli, now they call them knights, for the reason that they do not understand what the name trossuli means, and many are ashamed to be called by that name. And he sets out the cause, which was indicated above, and says that they are still, nevertheless, called trossuli against their will.

37| There are still some differences in gold that are not to be omitted. They gave auxiliaries and foreigners golden torques, but citizens only silver ones, and besides they gave citizens armlets, which they did not give to foreigners.

38| The same people, which makes us wonder more, gave crowns of gold even to citizens. Who was first presented with one, I have not found; who first gave one is reported by Lucius Piso: Aulus Postumius the dictator at Lake Regillus, the camp of the Latins having been stormed, him by whose work above all it had been captured. This crown from the booty he gave, of 2 pounds; likewise the consul Lucius Lentulus to Servius Cornelius Merenda, a town of the Samnites having been taken, but this one of five pounds; Piso Frugi gave his son one of three, from his private money, and bequeathed that crown to him by will.

39| For the sake of honoring the gods, in sacred rites nothing else was devised than that victims, the larger ones at least, be sacrificed with gilded horns. But in military life too this luxury grew so far that letters of Marcus Brutus from the Philippian fields are found, fuming that the brooches of tribunes be worn in gold. Is that so, by Hercules? For you, Brutus, said nothing of gold worn on women's feet. And do we accuse of crime that man who first gave dignity to gold through rings! Let men now also have on their upper arms what came from the Dardani — it was therefore called Dardanium; they are called viriolae in Celtic, viriae in Celtiberian —

40| let women have it on their armlets and on all their fingers, neck, ears, coils; let chains run about the flanks, and in privacy let little bags of pearls hang by gold from the necks of the mistresses, so that even in sleep there be awareness of the unions: shall it also be put on the feet, and shall it make this equestrian order of women, midway between the stola and the common crowd? We men more decently bestow it on our troops of page-boys, and the costly beauty of boys has transformed the baths.

41| Now indeed men too begin to carry Harpocrates and statues of Egyptian divinities on their fingers. There was another distinction also in the principate of Claudius, unusual among those to whom free admission had given the right to wear the emperor's image in gold on a ring, with great occasion for charges; all of which the beneficial rise of the emperor Vespasian abolished, by making the emperor equally public. About gold rings and their use let this much be said.

42| The next crime was that of him who first stamped a denarius in gold, and this too is hidden, the author being uncertain. The Roman people did not use even silver stamped before the defeat of King Pyrrhus. The as was a pound in weight — whence even now the libella and the dupondius are so called — and was weighed out; hence the penalty was called one of heavy bronze, and to this day items of expenditure in accounts are called expensa,

43| and likewise inpendia and dependere, and indeed the soldiers' stipendia, that is, the weights of the coin, and paymasters, scale-holders, by which custom, in those purchases which are of mancipium, a balance is even now interposed. King Servius first stamped bronze. Timaeus reports that before that the Romans used it raw. It was stamped with the mark of cattle, whence it was also called pecunia. The greatest assessment was 120,000 asses under that king, and therefore this is the first class.

44| — Silver was stamped in the year 485 of the city, when Quintus Ogulnius and Gaius Fabius were consuls, five years ahead of the first Punic war. And it was decided that the denarius should be worth 10 pounds of bronze, the quinarius 5, the sestertius two and a half asses. But the weight of the pound of bronze was diminished in the first Punic war, when the commonwealth was not sufficient for its expenses, and it was decided that the asses be struck at the weight of a sextans. So five parts of profit were made, and debt was discharged.

45| The mark of that bronze was a double Janus on one side, and on the other the prow of a ship, and on the triens and quadrans, rafts. The quadrans was previously called teruncius, from three unciae. Afterwards, when Hannibal was pressing, in the dictatorship of Quintus Fabius Maximus, asses were made of an uncia, and it was decided that the denarius should be exchanged for 16 asses, the quinarius for eight, the sestertius for four. In this way the commonwealth made a profit of half; in the soldiers' pay, however, the denarius was always given for 10 asses.

46| The stamps on silver were two-horse chariots and four-horse chariots; hence the coins were called bigati and quadrigati. Soon, by the Papirian law, asses were made of half an uncia. Livius Drusus, in his tribunate of the plebs, mixed an eighth part of bronze into the silver. The coin which is now called the victoriatus was struck by the Clodian law; for before that this coin, brought in from Illyricum, was counted as merchandise. It is stamped with a Victory, and hence the name.

47| — A gold coin was struck 51 years after the silver one, in such a way that the scripulum was worth twenty sesterces each, which makes, on the reckoning of the sesterce that was then current, VDCCLX to the pound. Afterwards it was decided that 40 denarii be struck from each pound of gold, and little by little the emperors reduced the weight, and most recently Nero to 45.

48| But from the coin came the first origin of avarice, with usury devised and idleness made profitable, and not gradually: avarice, or rather a hunger for gold, blazed out in a kind of madness, inasmuch as Septumuleius, a familiar friend of Gaius Gracchus, brought his head, cut off, to Opimius to be paid back in gold, and, lead having been added in the mouth, cheated the commonwealth even in his parricide; and not any of the Quirites now, but with the whole Roman name disgraced, King Mithridates poured gold into the mouth of the general Aquilius when he had been captured.

49| This is what the desire of having begets! It is shameful, looking at those names, which are devised ever new in Greek speech, gold being sprinkled over and inlaid in silver vessels, so that for such luxuries gilded ware sells for more than golden, although we know that Spartacus forbade anyone in his camp to have gold or silver. So much more spirit had our runaway slaves!

50| The orator Messalla reported that the triumvir Antony used golden vessels for all obscene needs, a charge that would shame even Cleopatra. The height of license among foreigners had been that King Philip was accustomed to sleep with a golden cup placed under his pillows, and that Hagnon of Teos, a prefect of Alexander the Great, fastened his sandals with golden nails: Antony alone, by an insult to nature, made gold cheap. O man worthy of proscription, but by Spartacus!

51| For my part I am surprised that the Roman people, when peoples were conquered, always demanded silver as tribute, not gold, as from Carthage when Hannibal was defeated, eight hundred thousand, 16,000 pounds annually for fifty years, no gold. Nor can this be thought to have happened from a scarcity in the world. Already Midas and Croesus had possessed it without limit, already Cyrus, when Asia was conquered, had found 24,000 pounds besides vessels and worked gold, and in it a throne, a plane tree, a vine. In this victory he carried away 500 talents of silver and the mixing bowl of Semiramis, whose weight came to 15 talents.

52| Marcus Varro reports that the Egyptian talent was a weight of 80 pounds. Already there had reigned in Colchis Saulaces, offspring of Aeetes, who, finding virgin earth, is said to have dug out the most gold and silver among the people of the Suani, and moreover in a kingdom famous for golden fleeces. And the golden vaults of that king, with silver beams and columns and pilasters, are told as conquered by Sesostris, king of Egypt, so proud that it is handed down that each year he was accustomed to yoke to his chariot by lot one of the kings of his subjects and so to triumph!

53| And we have done things that posterity will think fabulous. Caesar, who was afterwards dictator, was the first, in his aedileship, at the funeral show for his father, to use silver for all the equipment of the arena, and condemned men then for the first time attacked the beasts with silver equipment, which even in the municipalities they now emulate. Gaius Antonius made games with a silver stage, and so did Lucius Murena; the emperor Gaius led a pegma in the circus, in which there were 124,000 pounds of silver.

54| Claudius, his successor, when he triumphed over Britain, showed by inscriptions that among the golden crowns there were 7,000 pounds from Hither Spain and 9,000 from Long-haired Gaul. His successor Nero then covered Pompey's theater with gold for a single day, to show it to Tiridates, king of Armenia. And what a small part that was of the Golden House that encircles the city!

55| When Sextus Julius and Lucius Aurelius were consuls, seven years ahead of the third Punic war, the treasury of the Roman people held 17,410 pounds of gold and 22,070 of silver, and in coin 6,135,400; when Sextus Julius and Lucius Marcius were consuls, that is, at the beginning of the Social war, it held of gold [….] 1,620,831.

56| Gaius Caesar, on his first entry to the city in his civil war, brought out from the treasury 15,000 gold ingots, 30,000 silver, and in coin 30,000,000. Nor was the commonwealth richer at any other time. Aemilius Paulus also brought in, when King Perseus was defeated, from the Macedonian booty 300,000,000, from which time the Roman people ceased to pay tribute.

57| Coffered ceilings, which are now covered with gold even in private houses, were first gilded on the Capitol after the overthrow of Carthage, in the censorship of Lucius Mummius. From there they passed to vaults and also walls, which now themselves are gilded like vessels, although his own age judged variously of Catulus, because he had gilded the bronze tiles of the Capitol.

58| The first discoverers of gold, as of nearly all metals, we told in the seventh volume. I think the special favor of this material came not from its color, which is brighter in silver and more like daylight, and for that reason more familiar on military standards, since it shines farther, those people being plainly in error who think that the color of the stars pleased in gold, when in gems and other things it is not outstanding.

59| It was preferred to the other metals neither for weight nor for ease of working, since it yields to lead in both, but because it alone among things loses nothing in fire, even safely in conflagrations and on pyres. Nay, the more often it has been burned, the more it improves in goodness, and the test of gold is fire, in that it glows red and itself ignites with a like color; they call it obrussa.

60| The first proof of goodness, however, is to catch fire with the greatest difficulty. Besides, it is remarkable that, unconquered by the coals of the most violent wood, it kindles very quickly with chaff, and is cooked with lead in order to be purified. A second cause of its price, a greater one, is that it wears least in use, while lines are drawn with silver, bronze and lead, and hands are soiled by the falling material.

61| Nor is anything else spread out more widely or divided into more parts, inasmuch as ounces of it are scattered into seven hundred and fifty or more leaves, four fingers each way. The thickest of these are called Praenestine, the gilded image of Fortune there most faithfully still retaining the name. The next leaf is called the quaestorian.

62| Spain calls small masses of gold striges. Above all, it alone is taken in a mass or in grains. Whereas other things found in mines are finished by fire, this is gold at once and has its material complete as soon as it is found. For this finding of it is natural; the other, which we shall describe, is forced. Above the rest, there is no rust, no verdigris, nothing from itself that consumes its goodness or lessens its weight. Moreover, against the juices of salt and vinegar, tamers of things, it overcomes everything by its constancy, and besides it is spun and woven like wool, or without wool.

63| Verrius teaches that Tarquinius Priscus triumphed in a golden tunic; we ourselves saw Agrippina, wife of the emperor Claudius, when he was giving the spectacle of a naval battle, sitting by, dressed in a military cloak of woven gold without any other material. With Attalic cloths, indeed, it was long ago woven in, an invention of the kings of Asia.

64| On marble and on things that cannot be made white-hot, it is put on with the white of egg; on wood, with a specially compounded glue; they call it leucophorum. What this is and how it is made we shall teach in its place. To gild bronze with quicksilver, or at least with hydrargyrum, was the lawful way; about these we shall speak when we give their nature.

65| A fraud has been devised, for the bronze is first tortured and, when heated, quenched with salt, vinegar and alum, afterwards sanded off, the glitter showing whether it has been recooked enough, and again it is heated by fire, so that, thoroughly tamed, with pumice, alum and quicksilver mixed, it can receive the leaves laid on. Alum also has in cleaning a force such as we said lead has.

66| Gold is found in our world, to leave aside the Indian gold dug out by ants or that among the Scythians dug out by griffins, in three ways: in the grains of rivers, as in the Tagus of Spain, the Po of Italy, the Hebrus of Thrace, the Pactolus of Asia, and the Ganges of India, and no gold is more perfect, being polished by the very running and wearing. In another way it is dug from the pits of shafts or is sought in the fall of mountains; let each method be described.

67| Those who look for gold first of all pick up the segutilum; so the indication is called. It is a bed of sand, which is washed, and from what settles a conjecture is made. Sometimes it is found at once in the top of the earth by a rare good fortune, as lately in Dalmatia in the principate of Nero, pouring out even fifty pounds each day. When it is found in this way in the top turf, they call it talutium, if gold-bearing earth also lies beneath. Otherwise the mountains of the Spains, dry and barren and ones where nothing else grows, are forced to be fertile in this good.

68| What is dug from pits they call canalicium, others canaliense, clinging to the gravel of marble, not in the way in which in the East it glitters in sappirus and Theban stone and other gems, but embracing the flakes of marble. These channels of veins wander through the sides of the pits and hither and thither, whence the name was found, and the earth is held up by wooden columns. What has been dug out is pounded, washed, burned, ground.

69| The flour from the mortar they call scudes; the silver that comes out of the furnace, sweat. The filth that is thrown from the furnace in every metal is called scoria. In gold this is pounded and cooked again. Crucibles are made from tasconium; this is a white earth like clay, for no other bears the blast and the fire and the burning material.

70| The third method would have surpassed the works of the Giants. Tunnels are driven over great distances and mountains hollowed out by the light of lamps; the same is the measure of the watches, and for many months daylight is not seen. They call this kind arrugiae. And cracks suddenly settle and crush the workers, so that it seems now less rash to seek pearls and purples from the depth of the sea. So much more harmful have we made the lands! Therefore frequent arches are left to hold up the mountains.

71| Flints meet them in both kinds; these they break with fire and vinegar, but more often, since that chokes the tunnels with heat and smoke, they cut them with breakers holding 150 pounds of iron, and carry out the debris on their shoulders by night and day through the darkness, handing it to the next; the last see the light. If the flint seems too long, the digger follows its side and goes around it. And yet the work is thought easier in flint;

72| for there is an earth of a kind of clay mixed with gravel — they call it gangadia — almost impregnable. They attack it with iron wedges and the same hammers, and think nothing harder, except that among all things the hunger for gold is hardest. When the work is finished, they cut the necks of the arches from the farthest point. The fall gives the signal, and only the watchman at the summit of that mountain perceives it.

73| He orders the workers to be called out by voice and by a nod, and at the same moment flies down himself. The broken mountain falls of itself far off with a crash that cannot be conceived by the human mind, and with an incredible blast of air as well. The victors watch the ruin of nature. And yet there is as yet no gold, nor did they know there was any when they were digging, and for such dangers and expenses it was cause enough to hope for what they desired.

74| Another labor, equal or of even greater expense: they have led streams for washing this fallen mass from the ridges of the mountains, often from a hundredth milestone away; they call them corrugi, from conrivatio, I believe. Here too are a thousand labors: the fall must be steep, so that the water rushes rather than flows; therefore it is led from the very highest parts. Valleys and gaps are joined by built-up channels. Elsewhere impassable cliffs are cut away and forced to give a bed to hollowed timbers.

75| The man who cuts hangs from ropes, so that to one looking from afar he takes on the look not even of wild beasts but of birds. Hanging, for the most part, they level, and draw lines ahead for the route, and where there is no place for the footsteps of a man to stand, rivers are drawn by man. There is a fault in washing if the flowing stream brings in mud; this kind of earth they call urium. Therefore they lead the water over flints or pebbles and avoid urium. At the heads of the slope, on the brows of the mountains, pools are hollowed out, two hundred feet in each direction and ten in depth. Outlets of five square feet each are left in them, about three in number, so that when the pool is full and the stoppers are knocked out, the torrent bursts out with such force that it rolls the rocks along.

76| There is yet another labor on the plain. Ditches through which it may flow are dug — they call them agogae; these are laid step by step with ulex. It is a shrub like ros marinus, rough, and it retains gold. The sides are closed with planks, and over steep places the channels are hung. So the earth, flowing, slides into the sea, and the broken mountain is washed away, and for these reasons Spain has already pushed the land far out into the sea.

77| In the former kind, the water that is drawn off with immense labor lest it fill the pits is in this kind let in to flood the ground. Gold sought by arrugia is not cooked, but is at once its own. In this way masses are found, and also in the pits, even exceeding ten pounds each; they call them palagae, others palacurnae, and the same people call what is small baluce. Ulex is dried and burned, and its ash is washed over a grassy turf laid beneath, so that the gold settles.

78| Some have reported that Asturia, Callaecia and Lusitania yield twenty thousand pounds each year in this way, in such a way that Asturia produces the most. Nor in any other part of the world has this fertility persisted through so many ages. We have said that Italy is spared by an old prohibition of the fathers; otherwise no land was more fruitful in metals also. There survives a censors' law about the gold mines of the Victumulae in the territory of Vercellae, by which it was provided that the tax-farmers should not have more than five thousand men at the work.

79| There is still one way of making gold, from auripigmentum, which is dug in Syria for painters in the topmost earth, of the color of gold but brittle, like specular stones. The hope had enticed the emperor Gaius, most greedy of gold; for which reason he ordered a great weight to be smelted, and he made gold that was indeed excellent, but of so little weight that, having tried it, he felt the loss because of his avarice, although pounds of auripigmentum were exchanged at 4 denarii. Nor was it tried by anyone afterwards.

80| In all gold there is silver, in varying weight, in some places a tenth part, in others an eighth. In only one mine of Callaecia, which they call the Albucrarense, a thirty-sixth portion is found; therefore it excels the rest. Wherever there is a fifth portion of silver, it is called electrum. These filings are found in canaliense. Electrum is also made by art, silver being added. If it has exceeded a fifth portion, it does not stand up to the anvils.

81| Electrum too has an ancient authority, with Homer as witness, who reports that the palace of Menelaus shone with gold, electrum, silver and ivory. Lindos, on the island of the Rhodians, has a temple of Minerva in which Helen dedicated a cup of electrum; history adds, of the measure of her breast. It is the nature of electrum to shine more brightly than silver by the light of lamps. What is natural also detects poisons. For in cups arcs like rainbows run about with a fiery hiss, and in a twofold manner give warning.

82| A golden statue, the first of all, with no hollowness, and before any was made in any way of bronze, which they call holosphyraton, is said to have been set up in the temple of Anaitis, in the region of the world in which we have marked this name, the divinity most sacred to those peoples.

83| It was plundered in the Parthian affairs of Antony, and a witty reply is told of one of the veterans, at Bononia, at a hospitable dinner of the deified Augustus. When he was asked whether he knew that the man who had first violated that divinity had died blinded and crippled, he answered that at that very moment Augustus was dining off his leg, that he was the man, and that his whole fortune came from that plunder. Of men, the first to set up both a golden and a solid statue of himself, about the 70th Olympiad, was Gorgias of Leontini, at Delphi, in the temple. So great was the profit of teaching the art of oratory.

84| Gold has power in several ways in remedies, and is applied to the wounded and to infants, so that the poisons brought against them may harm less. Gold itself, when carried over, also has a harmful power, even on the offspring of hens and of cattle. The remedy is to wash it when brought in and to sprinkle those whom you wish to cure. It is also roasted with twice its weight of salt, three times its weight of misy, and again with 2 portions of salt and one of the stone they call schistos. In this way it draws out the poison, the things being burned together in an earthenware vessel, and the gold itself remains pure and uncorrupted.

85| The remaining ash, kept in an earthenware pot and applied with water, cures lichens on the face — it is agreed that the face be washed with lomentum — and also heals fistulas and what are called haemorrhoids. And if pounded pumice is added, it mends putrid ulcers and those of foul smell; boiled in honey with melanthium and applied to the navel, it gently loosens the bowels. That warts are cured with gold, Marcus Varro is the authority.

86| Chrysocolla is a liquid in the pits that we have spoken of, running down through a vein of gold, the slime thickening in the cold of winter to the hardness of pumice. It has been found that a more praised kind is made in copper mines and the next in silver mines. It occurs in lead mines as well, and a cheaper kind in gold mines. In all these mines it is also made by art, much below that natural one, water being let gently into the vein through all the winter up to the month of June, then dried up in June and July, so that it is plainly understood that chrysocolla is nothing else than a rotting vein.

87| The natural kind differs most in hardness; they call it uva. And yet that one also is dyed with the herb they call lutum. Its nature is that of linen or wool, to drink up juice. It is pounded in a mortar, then sifted through a fine sieve, afterwards ground and then sifted more finely. Whatever does not pass through is taken back to the mortar, then ground.

88| The powder is always distributed into dishes and soaked in vinegar so that all hardness is dissolved, and again pounded, then washed, dried in shells, then dyed with split alum and the herb mentioned above, and painted before it paints. It matters how absorbent and tractable it is. For if it has not seized the color, scytanum and turbistum are added; so they call the drugs that force it to absorb.

89| When painters have dyed it, they call it orobitis and make two kinds of it: the washed, which is kept as lomentum, and the liquid, in small balls dissolved with sweat. Both these kinds are made in Cyprus. The most praised, however, is in Armenia, the second in Macedonia, the most plentiful in Spain; the highest recommendation is that it reproduce as closely as possible the color of the herb of a green and flourishing crop.

90| It has now been seen at the shows of the emperor Nero that the sand of the circus was strewn with chrysocolla, when he himself was going to drive in a cloth of the same color. The unlearned crowd of workmen distinguishes it into three kinds: rough, which is priced at 7 denarii the pound, middle at 5 denarii, and worn, which they also call herbaceous, at 3 denarii. They coat the sandy kind, however, before they lay it on, with atramentum and paraetonium.

91| These are its binders, pleasing in color. Paraetonium, since by nature it is the greasiest and because of its smoothness the most adhesive, is sprinkled with atramentum, so that the whiteness of the paraetonium may not bring a paleness to the chrysocolla. They think that the yellow kind, lutea, is named from the herb lutum, and this very herb, rubbed under with caeruleum, they lay on in place of chrysocolla, the cheapest and most deceptive kind.

92| The use of chrysocolla is also in medicine, for cleaning wounds with wax and oil. The same, dry by itself, dries and contracts. It is also given in a sore throat or orthopnoea, to be licked with honey. It stirs vomiting; it is also mixed into eye-salves for scars of the eyes and into green plasters, to soften pains and to draw scars. The doctors call this chrysocolla acesis, which is not orobitis.

93| Goldsmiths also claim chrysocolla for themselves for gluing gold, and say that from it all similarly green things are named. It is tempered, however, with Cyprian verdigris and the urine of a boy before puberty, nitre being added, and is ground with Cyprian copper in Cyprian mortars; our people call it santerna. In this way gold is soldered, that which they call silvery. A sign is, if santerna being added makes it shine. On the contrary, coppery gold contracts and becomes dull and is soldered with difficulty. For this a glue is made from gold and a seventh part of silver, with the aforesaid things added and ground together.

94| It is fitting also to join together the rest on this subject, so that admiration for nature may touch the whole. The glue for gold is of this kind: clay for iron, cadmea for masses of bronze, alum for plates, resin for lead and for marble, while black lead is joined to white, and the white to itself, with oil; likewise tin to bronzes, silver to tin. — Bronze and iron are best melted with pine wood, but also with Egyptian papyrus, gold with chaff. — Lime is kindled by water, and the Thracian stone too, which is put out by oil; fire, however, is best put out by vinegar and birdlime and egg. — Earth burns least; charcoal has greater force when burned out and burning again.

95| After these, let the silver mines be spoken of, the madness that follows. It is found only in pits and is born with no hope of itself, with no glittering sparks, as in gold. The earth is in some places red, in others ash-colored. It cannot be smelted except with black lead or with a vein of lead — they call it galena — which is usually found beside the veins of silver. And in the same operation of the fires part goes off into lead, but the silver floats on top, like oil on water.

96| It is found in nearly all provinces, but most beautiful in Spain, and that too in barren soil and even on mountains, and wherever one vein has been found, another is found not far off. This is so indeed in almost every material, whence the Greeks seem to have said metalla. It is remarkable that the pits begun by Hannibal throughout the Spains still last. They have their names from their discoverers, of which one is called Baebelo today,

97| which furnished Hannibal with 300 pounds a day, the mountain being already hollowed out for 1,500 paces, through which space Aquitanians, standing night and day, carry out the water by the measure of lamps and make a river. A vein of silver found on the surface is called crudaria.

98| The limit of digging for the ancients used to be the discovery of alum; nothing was sought beyond. Recently a vein of copper found beneath alum has made an end of any limit to hope. The smell from silver mines is hostile to all animals, but most of all to dogs. — The softer gold and silver are, the more beautiful. Most people wonder that black lines are drawn with silver.

99| There is also a stone in these veins, whose pocket of everlasting liquid is called quicksilver. It is the poison of all things and breaks through vessels, seeping through with dire corruption. All things float upon it except gold; this alone it draws to itself. For this reason it also cleans gold best, spitting out its other impurities with frequent tossing in earthenware vessels. When the faults have been thrown out in this way, so that it too parts from the gold, it is poured into worked skins, through which, running down like sweat, it leaves pure gold behind. So also, when bronze is gilded, laid under the leaves it holds them on most tenaciously, but by its pallor it reveals leaves that are single or very thin. Therefore people seeking this theft used the white of egg to adulterate it, and soon hydrargyrum too, about which we shall speak in its place. And in any case quicksilver is not found in abundance.

101| In the same silver mines is found, to speak properly, a stone of foam, white and shining, though not translucent; they call it stimi, others stibi, others alabastrum, some larbasis. There are two kinds of it, male and female. They approve the female more; the male is rougher and scabbier and less heavy and less radiant and sandier, whereas the female shines, is friable, and splits open in fissures, not in lumps.

102| Its power is to bind and cool, but its chief use is about the eyes, for that is why many have also called it platyophthalmon, since in women's eye paints it widens the eyes, and its powder with gum of frankincense mixed in checks flows of the eyes and ulcerations of the eyes. It also stops blood flowing from the brain, and most effectively, sprinkled as powder, against fresh wounds and against old dog bites, and against burns from fire, with fat and spuma argenti and cerussa and wax.

103| It is burned, coated with morsels of ox dung, in ovens, then quenched with women's milk, and ground in mortars with rainwater added; and from time to time the cloudy liquid is poured off into a bronze vessel cleaned with nitre. Its dregs, which have settled in the mortar and are thrown away, are understood to be very full of lead. Then the vessel into which the cloudy liquid has been poured is covered with a cloth and left through the night, and the next day whatever floats on top is poured off or taken up with a sponge.

104| What has settled there is understood to be the flower, and with a cloth interposed it is dried in the sun, not so that it dries out entirely, and again ground in the mortar and divided into pastilles. Before all, however, the measure of burning is necessary, lest it become lead. Some do not use dung in the roasting, but fat. Others strain the powder in water through a threefold cloth and throw away the dregs, and pour off what has flowed through, collecting whatever settles. They mix it also into plasters and eye-salves.

105| The scoria in silver the Greeks call helcysma. Its power is to bind and cool the body, and it is added to plasters as a remedy, like molybdaena, of which we shall speak under lead, chiefly for gluing scars, and, infused in clysters with myrtle oil, against tenesmus and dysenteries. They also add it to the medicines they call lipara, for excrescences of ulcers, whether caused by friction or running on the head.

106| In the same mines is made also what is called spuma argenti. There are three kinds of it: the best, which they call chrysitis, the next, which they call argyritis, and the third, which they call molybditis. And generally all these colors are found in the same tubes. The most approved is the Attic, the next the Spanish. Chrysitis is made from the vein itself, argyritis from silver, molybditis from the casting of lead itself — which is made at Puteoli — and from this it has its name.

107| All of it is made, when its material has been smelted, by flowing down from an upper dish into a lower, and being taken up from it with small iron spits and rolled up in the flame itself on the spit, so that it may be of moderate weight. It is, as can be understood from the name, the foam of material that is boiling and will become something. It differs from scoria as foam can differ from dregs: the one is a fault of material purging itself, the other of material purged.

108| Some make two kinds of foam, which they call scirerytis and peumene, and a third, molybdaena, to be spoken of under lead. Foam, to be useful, is cooked a second time, the tubes having been broken to the size of rings. So, kindled with bellows to separate the coals and ash, it is washed in vinegar or wine and quenched at the same time. But if it is argyritis, to give it whiteness, it is ordered, broken to the size of a bean, to be cooked in an earthenware vessel with water, new wheat and barley being added in little cloths, until they are cleansed.

109| Afterwards for 6 days they grind it in mortars, washing three times a day with cold water and, when the day ends, with warm, adding fossil salt at an obol to the pound of foam. On the last day they then store it in a lead vessel. Others cook it with white bean and barley-water and dry it in the sun; others, in white wool with a bean, until it does not darken the wool. Then they add fossil salt, changing the water from time to time, and dry it during the 40 hottest days of summer. They also cook it in a pig's belly in water, and when taken out rub it with nitre and grind it as above in mortars with salt. There are those who do not cook it but grind it with salt and wash it with water added.

110| Its use is for eye-salves and for removing the ugliness of scars and blemishes from women's skin, and for washing the hair. Its power is to dry, soften, cool, purge moderately, fill ulcers, and soothe swellings; it is added to such plasters and to the lipara mentioned above. It also removes erysipelas, with rue and myrtle berries and vinegar, and chilblains with myrtle berries and wax.

111| In silver mines minium is also found, now among pigments of great standing and formerly among the Romans not only of the greatest but even sacred. Verrius lists authorities whom it is necessary to believe that the face of the image of Jupiter himself was accustomed to be smeared with minium on festival days, and the bodies of those who triumphed;

112| that Camillus so triumphed; that from this religious scruple it is even now added to the unguents of the triumphal banquet, and that the very first contract the censors let is for painting Jupiter with minium. The reason for this I for my part wonder at, although it is agreed that even today it is sought by the peoples of the Ethiopians and that their chiefs are entirely dyed with it, this being the color of the images of the gods there. For that reason we shall pursue everything about it more carefully.

113| Theophrastus reports that minium was found by Callias the Athenian 90 years before Praxibulus' magistracy among the Athenians — a time that works out as the year 349 of our city — Callias at first hoping that gold could be smelted from a reddish sand in the silver mines; that this was its origin,

114| but that it was found already at that time in Spain, though hard and sandy, and likewise among the Colchians on a certain inaccessible rock, from which men knocked it down by hurling missiles; that this was the adulterated kind, but the best above Ephesus in the Cilbian fields, a sand having the color of scarlet; that this is ground, then the meal is washed and what settles is washed again; that the difference in the art is that some make minium from the first washing, among others that is thinner, but the best is from the following washing.

115| I am not surprised that the color had standing. For already in Trojan times red ochre was in honor, with Homer as witness, who recommends ships by it, otherwise rare about pigments and paintings. The Greeks call it milton, and they call minium cinnabaris.

116| Hence arose an error through ignorance of names. For so they call the gore of a dragon crushed by the weight of dying elephants, the blood of both animals mixed together, as we have said, and there is no other color that properly renders blood in painting. That cinnabaris is most useful for antidotes and medicines. But, by Hercules, doctors, because they call it cinnabaris, use this minium, which we shall teach a little later is a poison.

117| The ancients painted with cinnabaris what even now are called monochromes. They also painted with Ephesian minium, which has been abandoned because the treatment of it was a great work. Besides, both were thought too sharp. Therefore they passed to red ochre and sinopis, of which I shall speak in their places. Cinnabaris is adulterated with goat's blood or crushed sorb-apples. The price of the genuine is 50 nummi.

118| Juba reports that minium is born also in Carmania, Timagenes also in Ethiopia, but from neither place is it brought to us, nor almost from anywhere other than Spain, the most famous being the region of Sisapo in Baetica, a minium mine belonging to the revenues of the Roman people, with the guarding of no other thing more careful. It is not permitted to finish it or smelt it there; the ore is brought to Rome under seal, about two thousand pounds a year; at Rome, however, it is washed, a price fixed by law for its sale, so that it should not exceed 70 sesterces to the pound. But it is adulterated in many ways, whence profit for the company.

119| For there is another kind in almost all silver mines and likewise lead mines, made from burned stone mixed with the veins, not from that one whose pocket we called quicksilver — for that too is smelted into silver — but from others found at the same time. They are also sterile flecks of lead. They are detected by color alone, and they redden only in furnaces, and burned they are pounded into meal. This is secondary minium, known to very few, much below those natural sands.

120| With this, then, minium is adulterated in the workshops of the partners, and more cheaply with Syricum. How Syricum is made we shall teach in its place; that Syricum is laid under minium, the reasoning of saving shows. And in another way there is an opportunity for theft among painters, as they from time to time wash out their full brushes. It settles in the water and is secured for the thieves.

121| In the genuine kind there ought to be the brightness of scarlet, but the splendor of the secondary on walls smacks of plumbago. Although this is a kind of rust of the metal. The Sisapo minium mines, however, have their own vein of sand without silver. It is smelted in the manner of gold; it is tested with white-hot gold, for the counterfeit turns black, the genuine retains its color. I find also that it is adulterated with lime, and that in a similar manner it is detected by a plate of white-hot iron, if no gold is to hand.

122| For what is smeared on, contact with sun and moon is hostile. The remedy is that, the wall having dried, Punic wax melted with oil be spread on hot with bristles, and again burned in with charcoal of galla brought near it until it sweats, afterwards worked over with candles and then with clean linen cloths, as marbles are made to shine. Those who polish minium in the workshops tie loose bladders over the face so as not to draw in the deadly dust as they breathe, and yet look out above them. Minium is also used in writing volumes, and makes letters brighter on a wall or on marble, even on tombs.

123| From the secondary minium, life itself invented hydrargyrum too, as a substitute for the quicksilver spoken of a little earlier. It is made in two ways: with minium ground in bronze mortars with pestles in vinegar, or placed in earthenware dishes with an iron shell, covered with a cup, clay plastered over it, then fire kindled beneath the dishes with continuous bellows, and the sweat on the cup wiped off in this way, which comes out with the color of silver and the liquidity of water. It is likewise easily divided into drops and runs together with slippery moisture. Since it is agreed to be a poison, I judge all that is reported about minium in the use of medicine to be rash, except perhaps that when smeared on the head or belly it stops blood, provided it does not penetrate into the viscera and touch a wound. I would not myself advise using it otherwise.

125| With hydrargyrum silver alone is gilded now, almost, although it ought to be applied in a similar way to bronze. But the same fraud, which is most ingenious in every part of life, has devised a cheaper material, as we have taught.

126| The mention of gold and silver is accompanied by a stone they call coticula, once not usually found except in the river Tmolus, as Theophrastus is the authority, but now everywhere. Some call it Heraclian, others Lydian. They are moderate in size, not exceeding four unciae in length and two in breadth. The part of them that has faced the sun is better than that which has faced the earth. When experts have scraped a test from a vein on these little stones, as with a file, they say at once how much gold is in it, how much silver or bronze, to a difference of a scripulum, by a wonderful method that does not fail.

127| Silver has two differences. It is tested with iron shovels glowing hot, a grain being placed on it, by whether it stays white. The next goodness is with a reddish one, none with a black one. But fraud intervenes in the test as well. If the shovels have been kept in men's urine, the grain is stained in passing, while it is being burned, and counterfeits whiteness. There is also a test of polished silver in a person's breath, if it sweats at once and disperses the cloud.

128| It was believed that plates could be drawn out into the likeness of glass only from the best. That used to be sound, but that too is now corrupted by fraud. There is a wonderful nature in rendering images, which is agreed to happen by the air being driven back and thrown back into the eyes. By the same force, thus, in the use of a mirror, when the thickness is polished and is pushed forward a little, the size of the images is enlarged immensely. So much does it matter whether it receives that reflection or rejects it.

129| Indeed cups too are so shaped, with many hollows driven in as if mirrors, that even for one person looking, a crowd of as many images appears. Monstrous ones are also devised, such as were dedicated in the temple at Smyrna. This happens from the shape of the material. It matters greatly whether they are concave and like a cup or a Thracian shield, depressed in the middle or raised, transverse or oblique, upturned or turned down, the quality of the receiving shape twisting the shadows that come;

130| for that image is nothing other than the shadow of the receiving material, spread out by its brightness. And, so that everything about mirrors may be completed in this place, the best among our ancestors had been the Brundisian, of tin and bronze mixed. Silver ones were preferred; Pasiteles first made them in the time of Pompey the Great. Recently people have begun to believe that a truer image is given when gold is set behind.

131| Egypt dyes silver, so that on vessels it looks upon its Anubis, and it paints silver, it does not engrave it. Hence the material has passed also to triumphal statues; and, remarkably, the price grows for a brightness blinded. This is done in the following way: to the silver is mixed a third part of the finest Cyprian bronze, which they call coronarium, and as much live sulphur as silver; they are fused in this way in an earthenware vessel coated round with clay; the measure of cooking is until the lids open of themselves. It also turns black with the yolk of a hardened egg, yet it is rubbed off with vinegar and chalk.

132| The triumvir Antony mixed iron into the denarius, others mix bronze in false coinage, others also take from the weight, though it is lawful that 83 be struck from a pound. Hence the testing of denarii was made an art, by a law so welcome to the plebs that they dedicated whole statues to Marius Gratidianus ward by ward. And remarkably, in this alone of the arts faults are learned, and the pattern of a false denarius is looked at, and a counterfeit is bought for more genuine denarii.

133| Among the ancients there was no number beyond a hundred thousand; therefore even today these are multiplied, so that they are said as ten hundred-thousands or more often. Usury made this, and the coin struck, and in this way too debt is even now called aes alienum. Afterwards men were surnamed Dives, provided that it is known that the one who first received this surname had defaulted on his creditors.

134| From the same family Marcus Crassus used to deny that anyone was rich unless he could maintain a legion from his yearly income. In lands he possessed 200,000,000 sesterces, the richest of the Quirites after Sulla, and it was not enough unless he had seized the whole gold of the Parthians; and — so that he may have taken hold of the memory of wealth, for it is a pleasure to hound that insatiable desire of having — we have known many afterwards freed from slavery who were wealthier, and in the principate of Claudius, a little before, three at once: Callistus, Pallas, Narcissus.

135| And, leaving these aside, as though they still held power, in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Gallus and Gaius Marcius Censorinus, on the sixth day before the Kalends of February, Gaius Caecilius Isidorus, freedman of Gaius, declared in his will that, although he had lost much in the civil war, he was nevertheless leaving 4,116 slaves, 3,600 yoke of oxen, 257,000 head of other livestock, and in cash 60,000,000 sesterces; he ordered that 1,000,000 sesterces be spent on his funeral.

136| Let them heap up riches exceeding number; yet how small a portion they will be of Ptolemy, who, Varro reports, while Pompey was operating around Judaea, maintained eight thousand horsemen from his own funds, and fed a thousand guests, with as many golden drinking cups, changing those vessels with the courses! And how small a portion would even that man himself — for I am not speaking of kings — have been of Pythes the Bithynian,

137| who gave King Darius that famous golden plane tree and vine, entertained the forces of Xerxes, that is 788,000 men, at a banquet, and promised five months' pay and grain, asking that of his five children one at least be left to his old age in the levy! Let someone compare even this man with King Croesus! What madness, curse it, is it to desire in life that which has either fallen to slaves as well or has found no limit even in kings!

138| The Roman people began to scatter largesse in the consulship of Spurius Postumius and Quintus Marcius; there was such an abundance of money that they contributed it to Lucius Scipio, from which he gave games. For when the people contributed sextantes of bronze to the funeral of Menenius Agrippa, I should judge that to be a matter of honor and necessity because of Agrippa's poverty, not of generosity.

139| Vessels of silver the amazing inconstancy of the human mind varies, no kind of workshop being approved for long. Now the Furnian, now the Clodian, now the Gratian — for we adopt shops for our tables — now we seek relief work and roughness cut away around the paintings of lines,

140| and now indeed we set tables on stands to bear the dishes, and scrape out some parts, so that the file may have destroyed as much as possible. That cooking vessels are made of silver, the orator Calvus cries out; but we have found carriages to be engraved with silver, and in our own age Poppaea, wife of the emperor Nero, ordered even the shoes of her more delicate pack animals to be made of gold.

141| Thirty-two pounds of silver was what the later Africanus left his heir, and the same man, when he triumphed over the Carthaginians, carried over 4,370 pounds. This was all the silver that Carthage had, that rival of the earth, a city later conquered by how great an apparatus of tables! When Numantia was destroyed, the same Africanus gave the soldiers 7 denarii each in his triumph. O men worthy of that commander, for whom this was enough! His brother Allobrogicus was the first of all to have a thousand pounds, but Drusus Livius in his tribunate of the plebs had 10.

142| For that an old man who had triumphed was marked by the censors on account of five pounds seems now fabulous, and likewise Aelius Catus, when the envoys of the Aetolians, in his consulship, approached him lunching off earthenware, did not accept the silver vessels sent by them, and had no other silver up to the last day of his life than two cups which his father-in-law Lucius Paulus gave him for his courage when King Perseus was conquered.

143| We find that the envoys of the Carthaginians said that no men lived more kindly among themselves than the Romans. For they themselves had dined from the same silver at everyone's house. But, by Hercules, we know that Pompeius Paulinus, son of a Roman knight of Arelate, clad in skins from his paternal race, had 12 pounds of silver with the army when set against the fiercest peoples;

144| and that the beds of women have long since been covered entirely with silver, some dining couches also. To these Carvilius Pollio, a Roman knight, is reported to have been the first to add silver, not to cover them or to make a Delian appearance, but a Punic one; he made the same also golden, and not long after silver ones imitated the Delian. All of which the civil war of Sulla atoned for.

145| For a little before this, dishes were made of a hundred pounds of silver each, which it is agreed there were at that time more than 150 in number at Rome, and many were proscribed on account of them by the deceit of those who coveted them. Let the annals blush that charged that civil war with such faults; our age was bolder. In the principate of Claudius his slave, Drusilianus by name, Rotundus, steward of Hither Spain, had a five-hundred-pound platter, for the making of which a workshop had first been built, and its eight companions up to 250 pounds, I ask you, how many of his fellow slaves were needed to carry them in, or who were the diners?

146| Cornelius Nepos reports that before the victory of Sulla there were only two silver dining couches at Rome, and that silver began to be added to sideboards in his own memory. Fenestella, who died at the very end of the principate of Tiberius Caesar, says that tortoiseshell too then came into use, but a little before his own time wooden ones, round, solid and not much larger than tables, and that in his boyhood square and joined ones began, covered with maple or citrus wood; soon silver was added at the corners and in lines along the joints; tympana, indeed, were so called in his youth, and then from balances also platters, which the ancients had called magides.

147| Nor does life rage only with the abundance of silver, but even more with the wages of craftsmen, and that long since, so that we may forgive ourselves. Dolphins bought at five thousand sesterces to the pound Gaius Gracchus had, and the orator Lucius Crassus two cups engraved by the hand of the artist Mentor for 100 sesterces, yet confessed that he had never dared use them, out of modesty. We know that the same man had vessels bought at 6,000 sesterces for each pound.

148| Asia, first conquered, sent luxury into Italy, since Lucius Scipio carried over in his triumph 1,400 pounds of engraved silver and 1,500 pounds of golden vessels [in the 565th year from the founding of the city]. But the same Asia, when bequeathed, afflicted morals much more gravely still, and that inheritance, on the death of King Attalus, did more harm than the victory.

149| For it was then, in the year of the city 622, that the scruple against buying these things at Rome at the royal auctions was removed, since in the 57 years in between the community had learned to love foreign opulence, and not merely to admire it; and the Achaean victory had also had an immense weight in driving morals on, for it too, won within this interval, in the city's year 608, brought in statues and paintings. So that nothing should be lacking,

150| luxury was born at the very moment Carthage was destroyed, by such a concurrence of fates that it became both pleasant and permissible to embrace vices. Some of the men of old, too, sought prestige from this source. Gaius Marius, after his victory over the Cimbri, is said to have drunk from canthari, after the example of Father Liber: he, the ploughman of Arpinum, a general from the common soldiery.

151| It is wrongly supposed that the use of silver first passed into statues through the flattery of the times of the deified Augustus. For we find that already in the triumph of Pompey the Great a silver statue of Pharnaces, the first to reign in Pontus, was carried in procession, likewise one of Mithridates Eupator, as well as chariots of gold and silver.

152| Silver sometimes takes the place even of gold, through the luxury of women of the common people who make anklets for themselves, since a custom grown too common forbids them to wear gold ones. We ourselves have seen Arellius Fuscus, who was removed from the equestrian order for a notorious false accusation, wearing silver rings at the time when crowds of young men flocked to his school. And what is the point of collecting such things, when soldiers' sword hilts are chased with silver, even ivory now being scorned, when their scabbards jingle with little chains and their belts with plates; when, indeed, page boys at the passage to manhood are kept in check with silver, when women bathe and scorn any bathtubs but silver ones, and the same material serves both for food and for indecency?

153| If only Fabricius could see these things, and the baths of women who bathe together with men, so paved with silver that there is no room for a footstep! Fabricius, who forbade generals in war to own more silver than a libation dish and a saltcellar: if only he could see the rewards of the brave being made from this, or broken up to make such things! Alas for our morals: Fabricius puts us to shame!

154| It is remarkable that no one has become famous for engraving gold, but many for silver. The most praised, however, is Mentor, whom we have spoken of above. Only four pairs in all were made by him, and none is said to survive now, owing to the fires that burned the Capitol and the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

155| Varro writes that he too owned a bronze statue by him. Next to him in admiration were Acragas, Boethus and Mys. Works by all of them survive today on the island of the Rhodians: by Boethus in the temple of Minerva at Lindus; by Acragas, in the temple of Father Liber in Rhodes itself, cups engraved with Centaurs and Bacchants; by Mys, in the same temple, Sileni and Cupids. A hunting scene on cups by Acragas was also very famous.

156| After these Calamis became celebrated, and Antipater, who was said to have laid a Satyr weighed down with sleep in a libation bowl rather than to have engraved it [….]; then Stratonicus of Cyzicus, and Tauriscus. Likewise Ariston and Eunicus of Mitylene are praised, and Hecataeus, and, around the time of Pompey the Great, Pasiteles, Posidonius of Ephesus [hedys], Thracides, who engraved battles and armed men, and Zopyrus, who engraved the Areopagites and the trial of Orestes on two cups valued at 1,200,000 sesterces. There was also Pytheas, 2 ounces of whose work sold for 10 denarii: it was Ulysses and Diomedes stealing the Palladium, on the emblem of a libation bowl.

157| The same artist also made cooks, called magiriscia, on little drinking cups, from which no one was allowed even to take casts, so open to damage was their delicacy. Teucer the crustarius was also famous; and then this art suddenly died out, so that it is now valued only for its antiquity, and engravings are prized when they are so worn down by use that the figure cannot be made out. (Silver is stained by medicinal waters and by salty air,

158| as in the inland parts of Spain.) In mines of silver and gold pigments are also found, sil and caeruleum. Sil is properly a mud. The best of it is the kind called Attic, priced at 2 denarii a pound; next is the marbled kind, at half the price of the Attic. The third kind is pressum,

159| which others call Scyrian, from the island of Scyros, and now from Achaia too; they use it for shadows in painting, at a price of two sesterces a pound; and, at a dupondius a pound less, the kind they call lucidum, which comes from Gaul. This and the Attic they use for highlights, and for panels only the marbled kind, because the marble in it resists the bitterness of lime. It is also dug in the mountains at the 20th milestone from the city; afterwards it is burned by those who adulterate it, and they call it pressum. But that it is false and burned is evident from its bitterness and because it has been reduced to powder.

160| Polygnotus and Micon were the first to paint with sil, and only with the Attic. The age that followed used it for highlights, and for shadows the Scyrian and the Lydian. The Lydian was bought at Sardis; it is now no longer used.

161| Caeruleum is a sand. Anciently it came in three kinds. The Egyptian is the most approved; next, the Scythian dissolves easily and, when it is ground, changes into four colors, whiter or blacker, and coarser or finer; the Cyprian is still preferred to it. To these were added the Puteolan and the Spanish, after sand began to be prepared in those places. All of it is dyed and boiled with its own plant, and drinks in the juice. The rest of the preparation is the same as for chrysocolla. From caeruleum is made what is called lomentum;

162| it is finished by washing and grinding. This is whiter than caeruleum. Its price is 10 denarii a pound, that of caeruleum 8 denarii. It is used on creta; it does not tolerate lime. Recently Vestorian has been added as well, named after the man who first made it. It is made from the lightest part of the Egyptian; its price is 1 denarius a pound. The Puteolan has the same uses, and is used besides for windows;

163| they call it cylon. Not long ago Indian caeruleum also began to be imported; its price is 7 denarii. Its use in painting is for the incisions, that is, for dividing the shadows from the light. There is also a very cheap kind of lomentum, which they call tritum, valued at five asses. The test of pure caeruleum is that it blazes up on a live coal. It is counterfeited with dried violets boiled in water, the juice being squeezed through linen into Eretrian creta. Its power in medicine is to cleanse ulcers; so they add it to plasters, and also to caustics. It is, however, very difficult to grind.

164| In medicine sil is gently biting and astringent, and fills up ulcers. It is burned in earthenware pots to make it effective. As for the prices of things that we have given anywhere, we are aware that they differ from place to place and change almost every year, according to the cost of shipping, or the terms on which each man bought, or as some powerful dealer whips up the market price; nor have we forgotten that under Nero's principate the whole of the Seplasia brought Demetrius before the consuls with an accusation. Nevertheless it was necessary to give the prices that generally held at Rome, so as to convey the value of things.

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