Natural History — Book XXXIV

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

1| Next let us speak of the mines of copper, the metal that also comes next in value for use; indeed the Corinthian kind ranks ahead of silver and almost ahead of gold. It also had the authority of coinage, as we have said. Hence we speak of soldiers' aera, of the tribuni aerarii and the aerarium, of men who are obaerati and aere diruti. We have shown how long the Roman people used only stamped copper; and another fact of antiquity declares its prestige to be as old as the city: King Numa established the copper-smiths as the third guild.

2| The ore is dug in the way we have described and refined by fire. Copper is also made from a coppery stone which they call cadmea, which is famous overseas and was once found in Campania, and now also in the territory of the Bergomates, at the far end of Italy; they say it has lately been found in the province of Germany as well. It is also made from another stone, which they call chalcitis, in Cyprus, where copper was first discovered; soon its value fell sharply, when a better kind was found in other lands, above all aurichalcum, which long held special esteem for its quality and was admired, but has not been found for a long time now, since the earth is exhausted.

3| Next in quality was the Sallustian, in the Alpine territory of the Ceutrones; it too did not last long, and the Livian, in Gaul, succeeded it. Both were named after the owners of the mines, the former after a friend of the deified Augustus, the latter after his wife.

4| The Livian also quickly gave out; at any rate very little of it is found. The height of fame has now passed to the Marian, which is also called the Corduban. After the Livian, this absorbs cadmea best, and imitates the quality of aurichalcum in our sesterces and dupondii, while the asses are content with their own Cyprian copper. So much for the natural excellence of copper.

5| The remaining kinds depend on human skill, and they will be given in their proper places, after the most famous have first of all been pointed out. Once bronze was fused and mixed with gold and silver, and yet the workmanship was more precious than the material; now it is uncertain which is worse, the workmanship or the material. And, wonderful to say, while the prices of works have risen beyond all limit, the prestige of the art has died out. For, like everything else, it has begun to be practised for gain, though it used to be practised for glory (that is why it was even ascribed to the work of the gods, when the leading men of nations sought fame by this road too); and the method of casting precious bronze has so far died out that for a long time now not even chance has had the privilege of art in this matter.

6| Of that ancient glory, the Corinthian is the most praised. Chance produced this alloy at Corinth, when the city was burned at its capture; and many people's passion for it is wonderfully frenzied, since it is reported that Verres, whom Marcus Cicero had convicted, was proscribed together with Cicero by Antony for no other reason than that he had refused to give up his Corinthian bronzes to him. To me, the greater part of these people seem to pretend to this knowledge in order to set themselves apart from others, rather than to understand anything more subtle in it; and I shall show this in a few words.

7| Corinth was taken in the 158th Olympiad, in its third year, the 608th of our city, when for ages before this there had been no famous modellers, all of whose statues these people today call Corinthian. Therefore, to refute them, we shall set out the dates of the artists; for the years of our city will be easy to work out from the correspondence with the Olympiads given above. The only true Corinthian articles, then, are vessels, which these connoisseurs convert now into dishes for food, now into lamps or basins, with no regard for refinement.

8| There are three kinds of it: a white kind, coming as close as possible to silver in brilliance, in which that metal predominated in the mixture; a second, in which the tawny nature of gold predominated; a third, in which all were blended in equal measure. Besides these there is one whose composition cannot be accounted for, though it is made by human hand; but chance does the blending in images and statues, and produces a bronze prized for its own color, tending toward the look of liver, which is therefore called hepatizon. It is far behind the Corinthian, yet well ahead of the Aeginetan and the Delian, which long held first place.

9| The most ancient fame in bronze belonged to the Delian, since the whole world thronged to the market on Delos, and hence care was given to the workshops. There bronze first won distinction in the feet and frames of dining couches; then it came also to images of the gods and to likenesses of men and other animals.

10| The next praise went to the Aeginetan; the island itself was made famous by it, not because the metal was produced there, but because of the alloying done in its workshops. A bronze ox taken from there stands in the Forum Boarium at Rome. This will be the example of Aeginetan bronze; of Delian, the Jupiter on the Capitol in the temple of Jupiter the Thunderer. Myron used the former bronze, Polycletus the latter; both were contemporaries and fellow pupils, and so their rivalry extended even to their material.

11| Aegina made a specialty of the upper parts of lampstands only, as Tarentum did of the stems. In these, then, the merits of the two workshops are combined. Nor are people ashamed to pay the salary of a military tribune for them, although the very name evidently comes from the light of candles. At a sale held by the crier Theon, the appendage to one such lampstand was Clesippus, a fuller, a hunchback and hideous besides in other respects, when Gegania bought it for 50 sesterces.

12| She showed off her purchase at a banquet; he was stripped naked for mockery, and then, through the shamelessness of her lust, taken into her bed, and soon into her will. Grown immensely rich, he worshipped that lampstand as if it were a god, and added this tale to the story of Corinthian bronzes; morality was avenged, however, by a splendid tomb, through which the memory of Gegania's disgrace would endure forever above the earth. But although it is agreed that there are no Corinthian lampstands, that name is especially celebrated in connection with them, since Mummius' victory destroyed Corinth, it is true, but at the same time scattered the bronzes of many towns of Achaia.

13| The ancients also commonly made thresholds and doors in temples of bronze. I find too that a double portico by the Flaminian circus, made by Gnaeus Octavius, who celebrated a naval triumph over King Perseus, was called Corinthian from the bronze capitals of its columns, and that it was decided that the temple of Vesta itself be roofed with a Syracusan surface. Syracusan are the capitals of the columns in the Pantheon set up by Marcus Agrippa. Indeed private opulence also practiced it in this way. Spurius Carvilius the quaestor included among the charges against Camillus that he had bronze-plated doors in his house.

14| For dining couches of bronze, and sideboards and monopodia, Lucius Piso is the authority that Gnaeus Manlius first brought in, Asia having been conquered, in his triumph, which he celebrated in the year 567 of the city; Antias indeed says that the heirs of the orator Lucius Crassus sold even many dining couches of bronze. They also commonly made of bronze the cauldrons of tripods, called by name also Delphic, since they were dedicated chiefly as gifts to Apollo of Delphi. Hanging lampstands in shrines were also liked, or shining in the manner of trees bearing apples, such as the one in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, which Alexander the Great had taken in the storming of Thebes and dedicated at Cyme to the same god.

15| The art then passed, commonly everywhere, to images of gods. At Rome I find a statue made of bronze first for Ceres, from the property of Spurius Cassius, whom his own father put to death for aiming at kingship. It passed also from gods to statues and likenesses of men in many ways. The ancients used to stain them with bitumen, which makes it more remarkable that it pleased people to cover them with gold. This, I suspect, may have been a Roman invention; at any rate the practice does not even have an old name.

16| Likenesses of men were not accustomed to be made except for some illustrious cause, for those deserving perpetuity: first by victory in the sacred contests, and most of all at Olympia, where it was the custom for statues to be dedicated of all who had won, but of those who had won three times there, with the likeness taken from their own limbs, which they call iconic.

17| The Athenians, I do not know whether they were not the first of all, set up statues at public expense to Harmodius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides. This was done in the same year in which kings were driven out at Rome too. The thing was then taken up by the whole world with a most humane ambition, and in the forums of all the municipalities statues began to be an ornament, and the memory of men to be handed on, and honors to be read by posterity to be inscribed on bases, so that they would not be read only on tombs. Soon a forum was made also in private houses and in halls: the honor of clients established this way of cultivating patrons.

18| Togate statues were dedicated in this way in ancient times. Nude ones holding a spear were also liked, from the models of the ephebes in the gymnasia; they call them Achilles figures. It is a Greek thing to veil nothing, but on the contrary Roman and military to add cuirasses. Caesar the dictator, indeed, allowed a statue of himself in a breastplate to be dedicated in his own forum. For those in the dress of the Luperci are as new as those that have recently appeared dressed in cloaks. Mancinus set up a statue of himself in the dress in which he had been surrendered.

19| It has been noted by authors that the poet Lucius Accius also set up a statue of himself in the temple of the Camenae of very large form, although he had been quite short. Equestrian statues at any rate have a Roman celebrity, the example arising without doubt from the Greeks. But the Greeks dedicated only victors on racehorses, celetes, at the sacred games, and later also those who had won with two-horse or four-horse chariots; whence our chariots too were born, for those who had triumphed. This is late, and among these only the six-horse chariots, from the deified Augustus, as also elephants.

20| The celebrating of two-horse chariots is not old either, for those who, having held the praetorship, had been carried in a chariot through the circus; older is that of columns, as for Gaius Maenius, who had conquered the ancient Latins, from whom under treaty the Roman people were due thirds of the booty, and who in the same consulship had fixed on the platform the beaks of ships from the conquered Antiates, in the year 416 of the city, and likewise for Gaius Duilius, who first celebrated a naval triumph over the Carthaginians, which is even now in the forum,

21| and likewise for Lucius Minucius, prefect of the grain supply, outside the Porta Trigemina, with a contribution of an uncia from each — I do not know whether it was the first such honor from the people, for before it was from the senate — a splendid thing, had it not begun from trivial beginnings. For there was also a statue of Attus Navius before the senate house — its base was burned when the senate house was set on fire at the funeral of Publius Clodius — and there was one of Hermodorus of Ephesus in the comitium, interpreter of the laws that the decemvirs were writing, dedicated at public expense.

22| Another cause, another authority, belongs to the statue of Marcus Horatius Cocles — which lasts to this day — when he had alone kept the enemy from the Sublician bridge. I am not surprised, for my part, that there are also Sibyls beside the rostra, though there are three: one which Sextus Pacuius Taurus, plebeian aedile, restored; two which Marcus Messalla set up. I should think these and that of Attus Navius, set up in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the first, were it not that there are statues of the preceding kings on the Capitol,

23| of whom those of Romulus and Tatius are without a tunic, as is also that of Camillus on the rostra. And before the temple of the Castors there was the equestrian statue, togate, of Quintus Marcius Tremulus, who had twice conquered the Samnites and, Anagnia having been taken, had freed the people from tribute. The oldest include those of Tullus Cloelius, Lucius Roscius, Spurius Nautius and Gaius Fulcinius on the rostra, men killed by the Fidenates on an embassy.

24| This used to be granted by the commonwealth to those killed by violence, as to others, and to Publius Junius and Tiberius Coruncanius, who had been killed by Teuta, queen of the Illyrians. It seems not to be omitted that the annals have noted that statues of three feet were set up for them in the forum; this, evidently, was the measure honored at that time. I shall not pass over Gnaeus Octavius either, because of a single word of a decree of the senate. As King Antiochus was saying that he would give his answer, he drew a circle around the king with a rod which he happened to be holding, and compelled him to give his answer before he stepped out of that circle. On that embassy he was killed, and the senate ordered a statue to be set up in the most conspicuous place possible, and it is on the rostra.

25| A statue is found decreed also to Taracia Gaia, or Fufetia, a Vestal virgin, to be set up where she wished, an addition which has no less honor than that it was decreed to a woman. I shall put her merit in the very words of the annals: because she had made the Tiber field a gift to the people.

26| — I find that statues of Pythagoras and of Alcibiades were also set up at the corners of the comitium, when in the Samnite war Pythian Apollo had ordered that images of the bravest of the Greek race and of another, the wisest, be dedicated in a crowded place. They stood until the dictator Sulla built the senate house there. And it is remarkable that those fathers preferred Pythagoras to Socrates, who was preferred in wisdom to all by the same god, or Alcibiades to so many others in courage, or anyone at all to Themistocles, who excelled in both.

27| The reasoning of columns was to be raised above other mortals, which arches too signify, a new invention. The first honor, however, began with the Greeks, and I think statues were dedicated to no one in greater number than to Demetrius of Phalerum at Athens, since they set up 360, the year not yet exceeding this number of days, which they soon tore down. At Rome too the tribes set up statues to Marius Gratidianus in all the streets, as we have said, and overturned them on the entry of Sulla.

28| Statues on foot were without doubt in authority at Rome for a long time; and yet the origin of equestrian ones is very old, since honor was shared even with women in the equestrian statue of Cloelia, as if it were little to be girded with a toga, when none was decreed to Lucretia and to Brutus, who had driven out the kings, on whose account Cloelia had been among the hostages.

29| I should believe this the first, together with that of Cocles dedicated at public expense — for it is likely that Tarquinius set up those of Attus and the Sibyl, and the kings their own — except that Piso also reports of Cloelia's that it was set up by those who had been fellow hostages with her, returned by Porsina in her honor. On the other hand, Annius Fetialis says that the equestrian statue, which stood facing the temple of Jupiter Stator in the forecourt of Superbus's house, was Valeria's, the consul Publicola's daughter, and that she alone had fled and swum across the Tiber, the other hostages who were being sent to Porsina having been killed by the ambush of Tarquinius.

30| Lucius Piso reports that in the consulship of Marcus Aemilius and Gaius Popilius, the latter for the second time, the statues around the forum of those who had held magistracies were all removed by the censors Publius Cornelius Scipio and Marcus Popilius, except those which had been set up by decision of the people or the senate, and that the one which Spurius Cassius, who had aimed at kingship, had set up for himself beside the temple of Tellus was even melted down by the censors. Evidently those men foresaw ambition in this matter too.

31| The outcries of Cato in his censorship survive, against statues being set up to Roman women in the provinces; yet he could not prevent them from being set up at Rome also, as to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, who was the daughter of the elder Africanus. A seated statue of her, distinguished by sandals without a strap, was set up in the public portico of Metellus, and that statue is now in the works of Octavia.

32| — It was set up at public expense by foreigners at Rome for Gaius Aelius, tribune of the plebs, a law having been carried against Sthennius Stallius the Lucanian, who had twice harassed the people of Thurii. On that account the Thurians presented Aelius with a statue and a golden crown. The same afterwards presented Fabricius with a statue, being freed from siege, and peoples were everywhere received into clientships in this way, and all distinction was so far removed that statues even of Hannibal are seen in three places in that city within whose walls he alone of enemies hurled a spear.

33| That the art of statue-making was also familiar to Italy and ancient is shown by the Hercules consecrated by Evander, as they report, in the cattle market, who is called Triumphal and is clothed in triumphal dress at triumphs, and besides the double Janus dedicated by King Numa, who is worshiped as a sign of peace and war, with fingers so shaped as to indicate a mark of 365 days [or by signification of the season of the year] and that he is the god of time.

34| Of Tuscan statues also, scattered through the lands, there is no doubt that they were commonly made in Etruria. I should think they were only of gods, were it not that Metrodorus of Scepsis, whose surname was given from his hatred of the Roman name, charged that Volsinii was stormed on account of 2,000 statues. And it seems remarkable to me that, though the origin of statues is so old in Italy, images of the gods dedicated in shrines were of wood or clay until Asia was conquered, whence luxury came.

35| What the first origin of expressing likenesses was will be more fittingly told in that art which the Greeks call plastice; for it was earlier than statuary. But this flourished without limit, a work of many volumes if anyone wished to pursue more;

36| for who could do everything? In the aedileship of Marcus Scaurus there were 3,000 statues on the stage alone, in a temporary theater. Mummius, when Achaia was conquered, filled the city, not meaning to leave his daughter a dowry; for why should it not be put down with an excuse? The Luculli also brought in many. At Rhodes there are even now 3,000 statues, Mucianus, thrice consul, reports, and not fewer are believed to survive at Athens, Olympia and Delphi.

37| Who of mortals could pursue all this, or what use in knowing it is understood? It would be pleasant to have touched on the most distinguished and those noted for some reason, and to have named the celebrated craftsmen, though for each of them the multitude is impossible to unfold, since Lysippus is reported to have made 1,500 works, all of such art that even single ones could give him fame: the number was found out after his death, when his heir broke open the treasure chest; for he was accustomed to set aside one gold denarius from the fee for each statue.

38| Art was carried beyond human belief by success, and soon by daring as well. As proof of success I shall bring one example, and not one of the likenesses of gods or men expressed. Our age saw on the Capitol, before it last of all burned, set on fire by the Vitellians, in the cell of Juno, a dog of bronze licking its wound, whose exceptional wonder and indistinguishable likeness to truth is understood not only from its having been dedicated there but also from the security given; for since no sum seemed adequate, it was publicly established that the guardians should pledge their lives for it.

39| Of daring there are countless examples. We see indeed huge structures of statues devised, which they call colossi, equal to towers. Such is the Apollo on the Capitol, carried by Marcus Lucullus from Apollonia, a city of Pontus, of 30 cubits, made for 500 talents;

40| such is the Jupiter on the Campus Martius, dedicated by Claudius Caesar, which is swallowed up by the nearness of Pompey's theater; such too is the one at Tarentum made by Lysippus, of 40 cubits. A remarkable thing in it is that, as they report, its balance is so movable by hand that it is shaken loose by no storms. The craftsman is said to have foreseen this also, by a column set up at a moderate distance, where the blast most needed to be broken. And so, on account of its size and the difficulty of shifting it, Fabius Verrucosus left it untouched when he carried the Hercules which is on the Capitol away from there.

41| Before all, however, in admiration was the colossus of the Sun at Rhodes, which Chares of Lindos had made, pupil of Lysippus mentioned above. The height of this image was 70 cubits; after 66 years it was overthrown by an earthquake, but lying it too is a marvel. Few can embrace its thumb; its fingers are larger than most statues. Vast caverns gape where the limbs are broken; inside are seen rocks of great mass, by whose weight the maker had steadied it when setting it up. They report it was completed in twelve years for 300 talents, which had fallen to them from the equipment of King Demetrius, left behind, weary of the delay, when Rhodes was besieged.

42| There are another hundred in number in the same city, colossi smaller than this, but each of which, wherever it had stood alone, would have made the place famous, and besides these five of gods, which Bryaxis made.

43| Italy has also made colossi. We see, at any rate, a Tuscan Apollo in the library of Augustus's temple, fifty feet from the thumb, doubtful whether more wonderful for its bronze or its beauty. Spurius Carvilius also made the Jupiter that is on the Capitol, after the Samnites, fighting under the sacred law, were conquered, from their breastplates, greaves and helmets. Its size is such that it is seen from the Jupiter of Latium. From the remnants of the filings he made his own statue, which is before the feet of that image.

44| On the same Capitol two heads also hold admiration, which the consul Publius Lentulus dedicated, the one made by Chares mentioned above, the other made by [….]dicus, so far beaten by the comparison that he seems the least approved of craftsmen.

45| But in our age Zenodorus surpassed all the size of statues of that kind, having made a Mercury in a state of Gaul, among the Arverni, over ten years, for a fee of 40,000,000 sesterces, after he had sufficiently proved his art there; summoned to Rome by Nero, he made there a colossus destined as an image of that emperor, 119½ feet in length, which, with that emperor's crimes condemned, was dedicated to the Sun for veneration.

46| We marvelled in his workshop not only at the remarkable likeness made from clay but also at what was the first thing of the work begun, from very small twigs. That statue showed that the knowledge of casting bronze had perished, though Nero was ready to bestow gold and silver and Zenodorus in the knowledge of modeling and engraving was inferior to none of the ancients.

47| When he was making the statue of the Arverni, in the governorship of Dubius Avitus over the province, he emulated two cups engraved by the hand of Calamis, which Germanicus Caesar, having loved them dearly, had given to Cassius Salanus, Avitus's uncle and his own teacher, so that there was scarcely any difference in art. The greater the superiority of Zenodorus, the more the obliteration of bronze is detected.

48| With the statues they call Corinthian, most people are so taken that they carry them around with them, as the orator Hortensius did a sphinx taken from Verres when on trial, because of which Cicero in the altercation at that trial, when Hortensius denied that he understood riddles, replied that he ought to, since he had a sphinx in his house. The emperor Nero also carried about an Amazon, of which we shall speak, and a little before, the ex-consul Gaius Cestius a statue, which he even had with him in battle. The tent of Alexander the Great, too, is reported to have been supported by statues, of which two have been dedicated before the temple of Mars the Avenger, and as many before the palace.

49| For smaller images and statues a nearly countless multitude of craftsmen has been made famous, but before all, Phidias the Athenian, who, having made the Olympian Jupiter of ivory and gold, made statues also of bronze. He flourished in the 83rd Olympiad, about the year 300 of our city; at the same time his rivals were Alcamenes, Critias, Nesiotes, Hegias, and then in the 87th Olympiad Hagelades, Callon, Gorgias the Laconian; again in the 90th, Polyclitus, Phradmon, Myron, Pythagoras, Scopas, Perellus.

50| Of these, Polyclitus had pupils in Argius, Asopodorus, Alexis, Aristides, Phrynon, [Dinon], Athenodorus, Demeas of Clitor, and Myron Lycius. In the 95th Olympiad there flourished Naucydes, Dinomenes, Canachus, Patroclus; in the 102nd, Polycles, Cephisodotus, Leuchares, Hypatodorus; in the 104th, Praxiteles, Euphranor; in the 107th, Aetion, Therimachus. In the 113th was Lysippus, when Alexander the Great also lived, and likewise Lysistratus his brother, Sthennis, Euphron, Eucles, Sostratus, Ion, Silanion — in this last the remarkable thing is that he was famous without any teacher; Silanion himself had a pupil, Zeuxiades —; in the 121st, Eutychides, Euthycrates, Laippus, Cephisodotus, Timarchus, Pyromachus.

52| The art then ceased and revived again in the 156th Olympiad, when there were, far below those mentioned, yet approved, Antaeus, Callistratus, Polycles the Athenian, Callixenus, Pythocles, Pythias, Timocles.

53| With the ages of the most celebrated thus distinguished, I shall run quickly through the remarkable ones, the remaining multitude being scattered here and there. The most praised also came into competition, though born in different ages, since they had made Amazons, which, when they were being consecrated in Diana's temple at Ephesus, it was decided should be judged, the most approved chosen by the judgment of those very artists who were present; and it appeared that the best was the one that all had judged second after their own. This is Polyclitus's; the next after it, Phidias's, the third Cresilas's, the fourth Cydon's, the fifth Phradmon's.

54| Phidias, besides the Olympian Jupiter, whom no one rivals, made likewise of ivory the Minerva at Athens, which stands in the Parthenon, and of bronze, besides the Amazon mentioned above, a Minerva of such exceptional beauty that she received the surname of beauty. He made also a cliduchus and another Minerva, which Paulus Aemilius dedicated at Rome beside the temple of the Fortune of This Day, and likewise two statues which Catulus dedicated in the same temple, one cloaked and the other a nude colossal figure; and he is judged, deservedly, to have been the first to open and demonstrate the art of toreutice. Polyclitus of Sicyon,

55| pupil of Hagelades, made a diadumenus, a soft youth, made famous by a hundred talents, and also a doryphorus, a boy of manly bearing. He made also the one that artists call the canon, seeking from it the lineaments of art as from a kind of law, and he alone of men is judged to have made art itself by a work of art. He made also a man scraping himself and a nude man attacking with a javelin, and two boys, likewise nude, playing at knucklebones, who are called astragalizontes and are in the hall of the emperor Titus — most judge no work more perfect than this —; likewise a Mercury,

56| which was at Lysimachia, a Hercules which is at Rome, a hagetor taking up arms, and Artemon, who was called periphoretos. He is judged to have completed this science and so to have schooled toreutice, as Phidias opened it. It is peculiar to him to have devised that statues should stand on one leg, yet Varro says that they are square and almost to a pattern.

57| Myron, born at Eleutherae, himself also a pupil of Hagelades, made himself most famous by a heifer, praised in celebrated verses, since most are recommended more by another's genius than their own. He made also a dog, a discobolus, a Perseus, the pristae, a Satyr marveling at the pipes, and a Minerva, Delphic pentathletes, pancratiasts, and the Hercules which is by the Circus Maximus in the temple of Pompey the Great. That he made a monument to a cicada and a locust Erinna indicates in her poems.

58| He made also an Apollo, which, taken away by the triumvir Antony, the deified Augustus restored to the Ephesians, warned in a dream. He seems the first to have multiplied truth, richer in his art than Polyclitus and more careful in symmetry, and yet himself, careful only as far as bodies went, he did not express the feelings of the mind, and made hair and pubic hair no more correctly than rude antiquity had established.

59| Pythagoras of Rhegium, from Italy, surpassed him with a pancratiast set up at Delphi; with the same he also surpassed Leontiscus. He made also Astylos the runner of the stadium, who is shown at Olympia, and a Libys, a boy holding a tablet in the same place, and a nude figure carrying apples; and at Syracuse a lame man, whose ulcer's pain even the onlookers seem to feel, likewise an Apollo and the serpent pierced by his arrows, a citharode who was called Dicaeus, because, when Thebes was taken by Alexander, gold hidden by a fugitive was concealed in the fold of his garment. He first expressed sinews and veins and hair more carefully.

60| — There was also another Pythagoras, of Samos, at first a painter, whose statues at the temple of the Fortune of This Day, seven nude and one of an old man, were praised. He is reported to have been similar to the one mentioned above, even indistinguishable in face, and Sostratus to have been the pupil and sister's son of the man of Rhegium.

61| Duris denies that Lysippus of Sicyon was anyone's pupil, but says that at first a worker in bronze he took his boldness from the reply of the painter Eupompus. For when asked which of those before him he followed, he pointed to the crowd of men and said that nature itself was to be imitated, not an artist.

62| He made the most statues of all, as we said, of a most fertile art, among them the man scraping himself, which Marcus Agrippa dedicated before his Baths, wonderfully pleasing to the emperor Tiberius. He could not restrain himself in this case, although in command of himself in the early part of his principate, and he moved it into his bedroom, another statue being substituted, whereupon the Roman people showed such obstinacy that with outcries in the theater it demanded the apoxyomenos be put back, and the emperor, though he loved it, put it back.

63| Lysippus is made famous also by a drunken flute-girl and by dogs and a hunt, and especially by the four-horse chariot with the Sun of the Rhodians. He made also Alexander the Great in many works, beginning from his boyhood, which statue the emperor Nero ordered gilded, delighted by it exceedingly; then, when the grace of the art had perished for the price, the gold was removed, and it was considered more precious so, even with the scars of the work and the cuts in which the gold had clung remaining.

64| The same man made Hephaestion, friend of Alexander the Great, whom some ascribe to Polyclitus, though the latter lived nearly a hundred years earlier; likewise Alexander's hunt, which is dedicated at Delphi, a Satyr at Athens, and the squadron of Alexander, in which he expressed the likenesses of his friends with the greatest resemblance of all; this Metellus carried to Rome when Macedonia was subdued. He made also four-horse chariots of many kinds.

65| To the art of statuary he is reported to have contributed most by expressing hair, by making heads smaller than the ancients did, and bodies slimmer and drier, through which the height of statues might seem greater. Symmetria has no Latin name; this he guarded most carefully, by a new and untouched method changing the square statures of the ancients, and he commonly said that they had made men such as they were, he such as they seemed to be. Peculiar to him seem to be the subtleties of his works, preserved in the smallest things too.

66| He left sons and pupils, praised craftsmen, Laippus, Boedas, but before all Euthycrates. Although he imitated the steadiness of his father rather than his elegance, he preferred to please in a severe style rather than a pleasing one. And so he best expressed the Hercules at Delphi, the Alexander as hunter at Thespiae, a cavalry battle, the image of Trophonius itself at the oracle, several four-horse chariots, a horse with baskets, and dogs of huntsmen.

67| — Moreover, a pupil of his was Tisicrates, himself also of Sicyon, but closer to the school of Lysippus, so that several statues are scarcely distinguished, like the old Theban and King Demetrius, and Peucestes, savior of Alexander the Great, worthy of so great a glory.

68| The craftsmen who have recorded these things in composed volumes celebrate with wonderful praises Telephanes of Phocaea, otherwise unknown, since [….] he lived in Thessaly and his works lay hidden there; otherwise by their own votes he is equaled to Polyclitus, Myron, Pythagoras. They praise his Larisa and Spintharus the pentathlete and an Apollo. Others think that this was not the cause of his obscurity, but that he had given himself up to the workshops of the kings Xerxes and Darius.

69| Praxiteles also, who was happier in marble and was therefore more famous, made nevertheless the most beautiful works in bronze too: the Rape of Proserpina, likewise a catagusa, and Father Liber, Drunkenness, and with it a famous Satyr, which the Greeks call periboetos, and the statues that stood before the temple of Felicity, and the Venus which itself was burned in the fire of that temple in the principate of Claudius, equal to that marble one of his, famous throughout the lands, likewise a stephanusa,

70| a pseliumene, an Opora, Harmodius and Aristogiton the tyrannicides, whom Alexander the Great, when Persia was conquered, sent back to the Athenians, having been captured by Xerxes king of the Persians. He made also a youthful Apollo lying in wait with an arrow, at close quarters, for a lizard creeping up, whom they call sauroctonos. Two statues of his are looked at, expressing different feelings, a weeping matron and a rejoicing courtesan. They think she was Phryne, and detect in her the artist's love and the payment in the courtesan's face.

71| His kindness too has an image; for he placed his own charioteer on the four-horse chariot of Calamis, lest Calamis, better in the likeness of horses, be thought to have failed in man. Calamis himself made other four-horse and two-horse chariots, always with horses expressed without rival; but, lest he seem inferior in the likeness of men, no Alcumena is more famous.

72| Alcamenes, pupil of Phidias, made marble works too, but a bronze pentathlete, who is called encrinomenos; and Aristides, pupil of Polyclitus, four-horse and two-horse chariots. Amphicrates is praised for a Leaena. She was a prostitute, a familiar of Harmodius and Aristogiton by her singing to the lyre. Their plans for the killing of the tyrant she did not betray, though tortured by the tyrants even to death; for this reason the Athenians, wishing to honor her yet not wishing to have celebrated a prostitute, made an animal of her name and, so that the cause of the honor might be understood, forbade the artist to add a tongue to the work.

73| — Bryaxis made an Aesculapius and a Seleucus, Boedas a man praying, Baton an Apollo and a Juno,

74| which are at Rome in the temple of Concord; Cresilas a wounded man fainting, in whom it can be understood how much breath remains, and an Olympian Pericles worthy of the name; and the wonder in this art is that it made noble men more noble. Cephisodorus made a wonderful Minerva in the harbor of the Athenians and the altar at the temple of Jupiter the Savior in the same harbor,

75| to which few are compared; Canachus made a nude Apollo, who is surnamed Philesius, in the Didymaeum, of the Aeginetan alloy of bronze, and together with it a stag so poised on its footsteps that a linen thread is drawn underneath the feet, with alternate gripping, heel and toes holding the ground, and so jointed by a tooth on both sides that by the push it springs back in turn. The same made boys riding racehorses; Chaereas made Alexander the Great and his father Philip; Ctesilaus a doryphorus and a wounded Amazon,

76| Demetrius a Lysimache, who was priestess of Minerva for 64 years; the same also a Minerva, who is called myctica — the snakes in her Gorgon resound with a ringing at the strokes of the lyre; the same, the horseman Simon, who first wrote about horsemanship. Daedalus, himself too praised among modelers, made two boys scraping themselves; Dinomenes, a Protesilaus and Pythodemus the wrestler.

77| — Euphranor's Alexander Paris is one in which it is praised that everything is understood at once: judge of the goddesses, lover of Helen, and yet slayer of Achilles. His is the Minerva at Rome that is called Catulian, dedicated below the Capitol by Quintus Lutatius, and the image of Good Outcome, holding a dish in the right hand and an ear of corn and poppies in the left, likewise Latona in childbed holding the infants Apollo and Diana in the temple of Concord.

78| He made also four-horse and two-horse chariots, and a cliticon of exceptional beauty, and Virtue and Greece, both colossal, a woman wondering and praying, and likewise Alexander and Philip in four-horse chariots; Eutychides made the Eurotas, in which very many have said the art was more liquid than the river itself. — Of Hegias, a Minerva and King Pyrrhus are praised, and boys riding racehorses, and Castor and Pollux in front of the temple of Jupiter the Thunderer; of Hagesias, in the colony of Parium, a Hercules; of Isidotus, a buthytes.

79| — Lycius was a pupil of Myron, who made a boy blowing on dying fires, worthy of his teacher, and Argonauts; Leochares made an eagle sensing what it is carrying off in the Ganymede, and for whom, and sparing the boy with its talons even through his garment, Autolycus the victor in the pancratium, on whose account Xenophon wrote the Symposium, and that Jupiter the Thunderer on the Capitol, praiseworthy before all, likewise an Apollo wearing a diadem, Lyciscus the slave-dealer, a boy of sly and painted servility; Lycius himself also made a boy fumigator.

80| — Menaechmus's calf is pressed down by a knee, its neck bent back. Menaechmus himself wrote about his art. — Naucydes is esteemed for a Mercury, for a discobolus, and for a figure sacrificing a ram, Naucerus for a wrestler panting, Niceratus for an Aesculapius and Hygia, which stand in the temple of Concord at Rome. — The four-horse chariot of Pyromachus is driven by Alcibiades. Polycles made a famous Hermaphrodite, Pyrrhus a Hygia and a Minerva, Phanis, a pupil of Lysippus, an epithyusa.

81| — Styppax of Cyprus is celebrated for one statue, the splanchnoptes; he was a home-born slave of Pericles the Olympian, roasting entrails and kindling the fire by blowing with a full mouth. Silanion cast Apollodorus, a modeler himself also, but of all the most careful in his art and an unfair judge of himself, often breaking finished statues, since he could not be satisfied in his desire for art, and therefore surnamed the madman — this he expressed in him,

82| and made not a man from bronze but anger — and a noble Achilles, likewise an epistates exercising athletes; Strongylion an Amazon, whom they call eucnemos from the excellence of her legs, for which reason she was carried about in the retinue of the emperor Nero. The same made a boy, whom Brutus of Philippi, by loving him, made famous under his own surname.

83| — Theodorus, who made the labyrinth at Samos, cast himself in bronze. Besides the marvelous fame of the likeness, he is celebrated for great subtlety: his right hand holds a file, and in the left he held with three fingers a little four-horse chariot, carried over to Praeneste as a miracle of smallness: a fly, made at the same time, covered [….] it, the chariot and the driver, with its wings. — Xenocrates, pupil of Tisicrates, or, as others say, of Euthycrates, surpassed both in the abundance of statues. He also composed volumes on his art.

84| Several craftsmen made the battles of Attalus and Eumenes against the Gauls: Isigonus, Pyromachus, Stratonicus, Antigonus, who wrote volumes about his art. Of Boethus, although better in silver, there is a child strangling an exceptional goose. And of all those that I have recounted, the most famous are now already dedicated in the city by the emperor Vespasian in the temple of Peace and in his other works, brought together into the city by the violence of Nero and set out in the sitting rooms of the Golden House.

85| Besides, there are craftsmen celebrated for an even standard, but outstanding in none of their works: Ariston, who also was accustomed to engrave silver, Callides, Ctesias, Cantharus of Sicyon, Diodorus, pupil of Critias, Deliades, Euphorion, Eunicus and Hecataeus, engravers of silver, Lesbocles, Prodorus, Pythodicus, Polygnotus, the same also a painter among the most noble, likewise among engravers Stratonicus, Scymnus, pupil of Critias.

86| Now I shall review those who made works of the same kind, such as Apollodorus, Androbulus, Asclepiodorus, Aleuas, philosophers, Apellas, and women adorning themselves, Antignotus, and a perixyomenos and the tyrannicides mentioned above, Antimachus, Athenodorus, noble women, Aristodemus, and wrestlers and two-horse chariots with a driver, philosophers, old women, King Seleucus. His doryphorus too has its own grace.

87| — There were two Cephisodoti: of the elder is the Mercury nursing Father Liber in infancy; he made also a man addressing an assembly with the hand raised — the person is uncertain —; the later made philosophers. Colotes, who had made the Olympian Jupiter with Phidias, made philosophers, and likewise Cleon and Cenchramis and Callicles and Cepis; Chalcosthenes made comedians and athletes, Daippus a perixyomenos, Daiphron and Damocritus and Daemon, philosophers.

88| — Epigonus, imitating nearly all those mentioned, excelled in a trumpeter and in an infant pitifully caressing its murdered mother. A woman wondering is praised among the works of Eubulus, a figure counting on its fingers among those of Eubulides. — Micon is looked at for athletes, Menogenes for four-horse chariots. — Nor less did Niceratus, who attempted everything that the others did, represent Alcibiades, and, by the kindling of torches, his mother Demarata sacrificing.

89| — On the two-horse chariot of Tisicrates, Piston placed a woman; the same made a Mars and a Mercury, and these stand in the temple of Concord at Rome. Let no one praise Perillus, crueler than the tyrant Phalaris, for whom he made a bull, promising the bellowing of a man shut inside when fire was set beneath, and was himself the first to experience that torture, with a more just cruelty. To this he had called away from the images of gods and men the most humane of arts. Therefore had so many founders of it labored, that torments should be made of it! And so for one reason alone are his works preserved, that whoever sees them may hate the hand.

90| — Sthennis made a Ceres, a Jupiter, a Minerva, which are at Rome in the temple of Concord, the same also weeping matrons and women praying and sacrificing. Simon made a dog and a bowman; Stratonicus, the celebrated engraver, made philosophers, both making hostesses;

91| athletes, however, and armed men and hunters and men sacrificing were made by Baton, Euchir, Glaucides, Heliodorus, Hicanus, Iophon, Lyson, Leon, Menodorus, Myagrus, Polycrates, Polyidus, Pythocritus, Protogenes, the same also a painter among the most famous, as we shall say, Patrocles, Pollis, Posidonius, who also engraved silver nobly, an Ephesian by birth, Periclymenus, Philon, Symenus, Timotheus, Theomnestus, Timarchides, Timon, Tisias, Thrason.

92| Of all these artists, the one most distinguished by his nickname is Callimachus, always a fault-finder of his own work and with no limit to his painstaking, for which reason he was called catatexitechnus, "the one who wears his art away"; he is a memorable example of the need to apply a measure even to care. His is the statue of the Spartan women dancing, a corrected work, but one from which his diligence has removed every grace. They say that he was also a painter. On the Cyprus expedition Cato kept back from sale only one statue, that of Zeno, not because he was captivated by the bronze or by the art, but because it was a philosopher's, so that this so striking an example too may be known in passing.

93| In mentioning statues, there is one that must not be passed over, although its maker is uncertain: it stands near the rostra, a Hercules in a tunic, the only one at Rome in that dress, grim of face, and feeling the last agonies of the tunic. On it there are three inscriptions: one, that Lucius Lucullus the commander set it up from the spoils of war; another, that Lucullus' son, a ward, dedicated it by decree of the senate; the third, that Titus Septimius Sabinus, curule aedile, restored it from private ownership to public. So many contests, and so great a dignity, did that image have.

94| Now we shall turn to the differences and mixtures of bronze. In Cyprian [coronarium and regulare are both ductile]: coronarium is beaten thin into sheets, and when dyed with bull's gall it gives the appearance of gold in actors' crowns, and the same, with six scruples of gold added to the ounce, glows like the very thin leaf of pyropus. Regulare is also made in other mines, and likewise caldarium. The difference is that caldarium is only cast and is brittle under the hammer, to which regulare yields, and is called by others ductile, which is what all Cyprian bronze is. But in the other mines too the care taken distinguishes it from caldarium; for all bronze whose faults have been more carefully purged and burnt out by fire is regulare.

95| —Among the remaining kinds the palm is given to the Campanian, which is most approved for household vessels. It is made in several ways. For at Capua it is melted not over charcoal fires but over wood fires, is cleansed through an oak sieve, being drenched with cold water, and is cooked again, quite often, in the same way, and last of all ten pounds of Spanish silver-lead are added to every hundred of bronze. In this way it becomes tough and takes on a pleasing color, such as people seek in other kinds of bronze with oil and salt.

96| A bronze like the Campanian is made in many parts of Italy and in the provinces, but they add eight pounds of lead and cook it again over charcoal because of the shortage of wood. How much difference this makes is felt most of all in Gaul, where the bronze is melted among white-hot stones; for the cooking, since it burns it too much, makes it black and brittle. Besides, they cook it again only once, whereas to have done so more often contributes very greatly to its quality. It is also not beside the point to have noted this, that all bronze is better cast in great cold.

97| —The next mixture is that for statues, which is also the one for plates, made in this way: the mass is first blown out, then a third part of collected bronze is added to what has been blown out, that is, bronze bought up from use. This has a special seasoning, being tamed by wear and, as it were, made gentle by the habit of polish. Twelve and a half pounds of silver-lead are also mixed in for every hundred of the blown metal.

98| There is further a mixture called "for the mould," of very soft bronze, since a tenth part of black lead is added and a twentieth of silver-lead, and in this way it best takes up the color they call Greek.—Last is the one called ollaria ("for pots"), the name being given by the vessel, with three or four pounds of silver-lead added to every hundred of bronze.—If lead is added to Cyprian, the color of purple results, in the borders of statues' togas.

99| Bronzes that have been wiped clean gather rust more quickly than neglected ones, unless they are rubbed with oil. They say they are best preserved in liquid pitch. The use of bronze for the perpetuity of records was long ago transferred to bronze tablets, on which public enactments are engraved.

100| The mines of bronze supply medicine in many ways, inasmuch as all ulcers are healed there most quickly; yet cadmea is of most benefit. This is without doubt made in silver furnaces also, whiter and less heavy, but by no means comparable with that from the bronze-works. There are, however, several kinds. For just as the stone itself from which bronze is made is called cadmea, necessary for founders, useless for medicine, so in turn another kind arises in the furnaces which takes the name of its origin.

101| It is made when the finest part of the material is driven out by the flames and the blast, and is applied to the vaults and sides of the furnaces in proportion to its lightness. The finest is at the very mouth of the furnaces, what the flames have belched out, called capnitis, burnt up and from its great lightness like ash. The inner kind is the best, hanging from the vaults and named botryitis from that circumstance; this is heavier than the former,

102| lighter than those that follow—it has two colors, the worse ash-gray, the better like pumice—, friable and most useful for medicines for the eyes. The third is on the sides of the furnaces, which because of its weight could not reach the vaults. This is called placitis, likewise from its character, being more truly a flat crust than a pumice, variegated inside, more useful for psora and for drawing out scars.

103| Two other kinds are made from it: onychitis, almost blue outside, inside like the markings of the onyx, and ostracitis, wholly black and the foulest of the others, most useful for wounds. All cadmea, however, the best being that from the furnaces of Cyprus, is cooked a second time by physicians over pure charcoal, and when it has returned to ash it is quenched in Aminnean wine if it is being prepared for plasters, but in vinegar if for psora.

104| Some burn it, after pounding, in earthenware pots and wash it in mortars, afterwards drying it. Nymphodorus burns the stone itself, the heaviest and densest possible, on glowing coals, quenches it when burnt with Chian wine and pounds it, then sifts it through linen and grinds it in a mortar, then soaks it in rainwater and again grinds what has settled, until it becomes like cerussa, with no grittiness to the teeth. The method of Iollas is the same, but he chooses the purest stone available.

105| The effects of cadmea are to dry, to heal thoroughly, to stop fluxes, to clear away pterygia and the filth of the eyes, to reduce roughness, and whatever else we shall say of the effect of lead. Bronze itself too is burnt for all the same purposes, and besides white spots on the eyes and scars it cures ulcers of the eyes also when used with milk; and so the Egyptians grind it in small whetstones in the manner of an eye-salve.

106| Taken in honey it also causes vomiting. Cyprian bronze is burnt in unfired earthenware with an equal weight of sulphur, the vent of the vessels being sealed around, in kilns, until the vessels themselves are thoroughly baked. Some add salt too, some alum in place of sulphur, others nothing, but only sprinkle it with vinegar. When burnt it is ground in a Theban mortar, washed with rainwater, and ground again with more added, and left until it settles, and this is repeated several times, until it returns to the appearance of minium. Then, dried in the sun, it is kept in a bronze box.

107| The slag of bronze is washed in a similar way, with less effect than the bronze itself. But the flower of bronze also is useful for medicine. It is made when bronze has been melted and moved to other furnaces; there, by a more frequent blast, something like millet scales is shaken off, which they call flower; these fall when the cakes of bronze are cooled with water, and in the same way scales of bronze go red, which they call lepida, and so the flower is adulterated, so that scale is sold in place of it. Scale of bronze, however, is what is knocked off by force from the nails with which the bronze cakes are soldered together, chiefly in the workshops of Cyprus. The whole difference is this, that the scale is shaken off by a blow from the same cakes, while the flower falls of its own accord.

108| There is another, finer kind of scale, knocked off, that is, from the very top of the surface down, which they call stomoma. And all these things the physicians—if I may say so with their leave—do not know. They obey the names: so far are they from preparing medicines, which used to be the proper business of medicine. Now whenever they come upon little books, wishing to compose something from them, which is to test the commentaries at the expense of the wretched, they trust the Seplasia, which corrupts everything with frauds. Plasters and eye-salves now they buy already made, and let the rot of the wares or the fraud of the Seplasia be stirred up in this way!

109| Both scale and flower are burnt in earthenware or bronze dishes, then washed, as above, for the same uses; scale moreover removes fleshy growths of the nostrils and likewise of the seat, and heaviness of the ears when driven into them through a pipe by blowing, and the uvula of the mouth when meal is applied, and the tonsils with honey. A scale made from white bronze is far less effective than the Cyprian. Some, about to shake off the scale, first soak the nails and cakes in a boy's urine, and grind them and wash them in rainwater. They also give it to dropsy patients, 2 drachmas in a hemina of honey wine, and they smear it on with fine flour.

110| Verdigris too has great use. It is made in several ways. For it is scraped from the stone from which bronze is cooked, and also from white bronze that has been pierced and hung in jars over sharp vinegar and closed with a lid. It is much more approved if this same thing is done with scales. Some store the vessels themselves of white bronze in earthenware in vinegar and scrape them on the tenth day;

111| others cover them with grape-skins and scrape after the same number of days, others sprinkle filed-off bronze dust with vinegar and turn it with spatulas several times a day, until it is used up. The same dust others prefer to grind in bronze mortars with vinegar. It comes most quickly of all when the clippings of the crown-makers are added to the vinegar.

112| They adulterate it, especially the Rhodian verdigris, with ground marble, others with pumice or gum. But above all it deceives when adulterated with shoemakers' black; for the other adulterations are detected by the tooth, grating in the grinding. A test is made on an iron shovel, for what is pure keeps its own color, while what is mixed with the black turns red. It is also detected by papyrus first soaked in gall, for it blackens at once when smeared with the verdigris. It is also detected by sight, from its grudging green.

113| But whether it is pure or adulterated, it is most suitable to wash it, and when dried to burn it in a new dish and turn it until it becomes ash; afterwards it is ground and stored away. Some burn it in unfired earthenware until the clay is thoroughly baked. Some also mix in male frankincense. Verdigris is washed like cadmea. Its force is most suited to eye-salves, and by its biting it helps watering of the eyes, but it must be washed off with warm swabs until it stops eating away.

114| —The eye-salve called hieracium is so named because it consists chiefly of it. It is compounded of 4 ounces of hammoniacum, 2 of Cyprian verdigris, as much of shoemakers' black, which they call chalcanthum, 1 of misy, and 6 of saffron. All these are ground and gathered with Thasian vinegar into little pills, an excellent remedy against the beginnings of glaucomata and suffusions, against dimness or roughness and white spots and faults of the eyelids. Raw verdigris, however, is mixed into plasters for wounds.

115| It also wonderfully corrects ulcerations of the mouth and gums, and sores of the lips, with oil. If wax is added as well, it cleanses and brings them to a scar. Verdigris also eats away the callus of fistulas and the faults around the seat, whether smeared on by itself or with hammoniacum, or driven into the fistulas in the manner of an eye-salve. The same, worked up with a third part of turpentine resin, removes leprous sores.

116| There is also another kind of verdigris, which they call scolex, made of Cyprian bronze ground with alum and salt or nitrum in equal weight, with the sharpest white vinegar. This is not made except on the hottest days about the time when the Dog Star rises. It is ground until it becomes green and draws itself together in the shape of little worms, whence the name. If it is spoiled, to have it corrected, urine of a boy under puberty is mixed in, 2 parts to what there was of vinegar. The same effect in medicines is produced by santerna, with which we have said gold is soldered. The use of both is that of verdigris. Scolex is also made of itself, scraped from the bronze-workers' stone, of which we shall now speak.

117| They call it chalcitis, and from this too bronze is cooked. It differs from cadmea in that cadmea is cut above ground from rocks in the open air, chalcitis from buried ones, and also in that chalcitis crumbles at once, being of a soft nature, so that it looks like wool matted together. There is another distinction as well, that chalcitis contains three kinds, of bronze, of misy and of sory, of each of which we shall speak in its own place. It has elongated veins of bronze.

118| It is approved when honey-colored, with a fine spreading of veins, crumbling and not stony. They think too that the fresh is more useful, since the aged turns into sory. Its force is against growths in ulcers, to stop blood, to restrain gums, uvula and tonsils with meal, and to be applied in wool for ailments of the womb. With the juice of leek, however, it is added to plasters for the private parts.

119| It is soaked in an earthenware vessel in vinegar, the vessel sealed round with dung, for 40 days, and takes on the color of saffron. Then, mixed with an equal weight of cadmea, it makes the medicine called psoricon. If 2 parts of chalcitis are compounded with a third of cadmea, the same is made sharper; still more violent if it is mixed with vinegar rather than wine; roasted, however, it becomes more effective for all the same purposes.

120| Of sory the Egyptian is most praised, far surpassing the Cyprian and the Spanish and the African, although some think the Cyprian more useful for treating the eyes; but in whatever country, the best is the one whose smell is strongest to the nose, and when ground turns black and greasy and is spongy. It is so contrary to the stomach that to some the smell alone brings on vomiting. And the Egyptian is of this kind; that of another country when ground shines like misy and is more stony. It also helps toothache, if kept in the mouth and swilled about, and serious ulcers of the mouth and those that creep. It is burnt over coals like chalcitis.

121| Some have handed down that misy is made by burning stone in pits, its yellow flower mingling with the ash of pine wood. In truth, however, it is made from the stone spoken of above, formed by nature and separated by force, the best in the workshops of the Cypriots, the marks of which are golden sparks when crumbled and, when ground, a sandy nature without earth, similar to chalcitis. This is mixed in by those who refine gold. Its usefulness is when poured in with rose oil into discharging ears, and when put on in wool for ulcers of the head. It also reduces old roughness of the eyes, and is especially useful for the tonsils and against quinsies and suppurations.

122| The method is that 16 drachmas are cooked in a hemina of vinegar with honey added, until it thickens. So prepared it is useful for the purposes mentioned above. Whenever its force needs to be softened, honey is sprinkled on. It eats away the callus of fistulas when used as a fomentation with vinegar, and is added to eye-salves; it stops blood and ulcers that creep or putrefy, and consumes proud flesh. It is particularly useful for ailments of the male organs, and stops the women's flux.

123| The Greeks have made it a relation of bronze by the name, and of shoemakers' black; for they call it chalcanthon. Nor is there any whose nature is so wonderful. It is made in the wells of Spain, or in pools holding water of this kind. It is boiled down mixed with fresh water in equal measure and poured into wooden vats. Over these, on immovable cross-beams, are hung cords stretched with small stones, to which the slime adheres in glassy berries, giving a kind of image of a grape. When taken out it is dried in this way for 30 days. The color is blue with a most remarkable brilliance, and it is believed to be glass; by dissolving it, it becomes the black for dyeing leather.

124| It is made also in several ways: in a kind of earth, with pits hollowed in it, from the sides of which icicles dripping in the winter frost are called stalagmia, and there is nothing purer. But the kind from this that takes a white color, with a violet tint, they call lonchoton.

125| It is made also in the basins of rocks from rainwater, with the slime hardened by frost; and it is made in the manner of salt, when the hottest sun curdles fresh water let in. Therefore some, by a twofold difference, call it fossile or facticium ("dug" or "made"), the latter paler and as much worse in goodness as in color.

126| For medicinal use they most approve the Cyprian. It is taken, to drive out the creatures of the belly, in the weight of a drachma with honey. Diluted and instilled in the nostrils, it cleanses the head, and the stomach likewise when taken with honey or honeyed water. It cures also roughness of the eyes, pain and dimness, and ulcers of the mouth. It stops bleeding of the nose, and of the haemorrhoids likewise. With the seed of hyoscyamus it draws out broken bones; it holds back fluxes of the eyes when applied to the forehead with a swab; it is effective also in plasters for cleansing wounds and the growths of ulcers.

127| It removes the uvula also, or even if they are only touched with a decoction of it; with the seed of flax too it is laid over plasters to remove pains. The part of it that is white is preferred over the violet kinds for one use only, to be blown through pipes into the ears for heaviness. Smeared on by itself it heals wounds, but dyes scars. Recently it has been found out that the jaws of bears and of lions in the arena are sprinkled with it, and so great is its power of contraction that they cannot bite.

128| Still further, in the bronze-works are found what they call pompholyx and spodos. The difference is that pompholyx is separated by washing, spodos is unwashed. Some have called pompholyx what is white and lightest, saying that it is the ash of bronze and cadmea, and spodos what is blacker and heavier, scraped from the walls of the furnaces, with sparks mixed in, and sometimes with charcoal.

129| When vinegar is added, this gives off the smell of bronze and, if touched with the tongue, a rough taste. It suits medicines for the eyes, meeting whatever faults there are, and serves for all the purposes of spodos. It differs only in this, that its force is more washed out. It is also added to plasters in which a gentle cooling and drying is sought. It is more useful for everything when it has been washed in wine.

130| Spodos from Cyprus is the best. It is made when cadmea and the bronze-workers' stone melt. This is the lightest part of the whole blast, and flies out of the furnaces and clings to the roofs, distinguished from soot by its whiteness. What of it is less white is evidence of an unripe furnace; some call this pompholyx. What of it is found rather reddish has a sharper force and so ulcerates that, when it is being washed, if it touches the eyes it blinds.

131| There is also a honey-colored spodos, in which a great deal of bronze is perceived. But whatever the kind, it becomes more useful by washing; it is first cleansed with a feather, then in a coarser washing the rough bits are picked out with the fingers. The spodos washed in wine is of outstanding force. There is some difference too in the kind of wine. For washed in a mild wine it is thought less useful for eye-salves, while the same is more effective for ulcers that persist, or those of the mouth that are moist, and for all medicines prepared against gangrenes.

132| Spodos is also made in silver furnaces, which they call Lauriotis. But that which is made in the gold-works is declared the most useful for the eyes, and in no other part is there more cause to wonder at the ingenuity of life. For, so that metals need not be sought, it has devised the same uses from the cheapest things.

133| They call antispodon the ash of the fig tree or the wild fig or of leaves of myrtle with the tenderest parts of the branches, or of the wild olive or the olive or the quince or the mastic, likewise of unripe mulberries, that is white ones, dried in the sun, or of the foliage of box or pseudocyperus or bramble or terebinth or oenanthe. It has been found that the ash of bull's glue or of linen cloths is similarly potent. All these are burnt in unfired earthenware in furnaces until the clay is thoroughly baked.

134| In the bronze-works smegma is also made, when the bronze has already been melted and fully cooked, with charcoal added besides and gradually kindled, and then by a suddenly stronger blast a kind of chaff of bronze is spat out. The ground on which it is caught must be strewn with marilla.

135| From it is distinguished what in the same workshops the Greeks call diphryges, from the fact that it is roasted twice. Its origin is threefold. For it is said to be made from pyrites stone burnt in kilns until it is cooked down into red ochre. It is made also in Cyprus from the clay of a certain cave, dried first, then with vine-cuttings gradually piled around it. In a third way it is made in the furnaces, as the dregs of the bronze settle. The difference is that the bronze itself flows down into basins, the slag out of the furnaces, the flower floats on top, and the diphryges remain.

136| Some report that in the furnaces balls of the stone that is to be cooked are fastened together, that the bronze boils around this, that the stone itself is not thoroughly cooked unless moved into other furnaces, and that it is a kind of knot of the material; that what is left over from the cooked is called diphryges. Its use in medicine is like that of those mentioned: to dry, to consume growths and to cleanse again. It is tested with the tongue, so that it dries it at once on touch and gives back the taste of bronze.

137| One further marvel of bronze we shall not omit. The Servilian family, famous in the Fasti, keeps a bronze triens fed with gold and silver, which consumes both. Its origin and nature are unknown to me. I shall set down the very words of old Messalla on the matter: The family of the Servilii has a sacred triens, to which with the greatest care and splendor they make sacrifices every year. They say that it seems at one time to have grown, at another to have shrunk, and that from this it signifies either honor or diminution for the family.

138| Next the mines of iron must be described. It is the best and the worst instrument of life, since with it we cleave the earth, plant trees, prune orchards, and each year force the vines to grow young again by cutting off their squalor; with it we build houses, cut stone, and use iron for all other purposes, but the same iron for wars, slaughter and brigandage, not only hand to hand but also as a missile and winged weapon, now shot from engines, now from the arm, now indeed feathered, which I judge the most criminal trick of the human mind, since, to make death reach man more quickly, we made it a bird and gave iron its wings.

139| Wherefore let the blame be taken to be its own and not nature's. By a number of proofs it has been shown that iron can be innocent. In the treaty which Porsina gave the Roman people after the kings were driven out, we find it expressly included that iron should not be used except in the cultivation of the land. And the oldest authors have handed down that it was then the custom to write with a bone stylus. There survives an edict from Pompey the Great's third consulship, made in the tumult of Clodius' killing, forbidding any weapon to be in the city.

140| And ancient art itself did not fail to give iron too a milder honor. The artist Aristonidas, wishing to express the madness of Athamas, who sat in repentance after hurling down his son Learchus, mixed bronze and iron, so that by the rust of the iron shining through the brightness of the bronze the blush of shame might be expressed. This statue survives today at Rhodes.

141| There is in the same city also an iron Hercules, which Alcon made, led to it by the endurance of the god in his labors. We see at Rome also cups of iron dedicated in the temple of Mars the Avenger. The same kindness of nature stood in the way, exacting penalties from iron itself by rust, and the same foresight, making nothing more mortal among things than what was most hostile to mortality.

142| The mines of iron are found almost everywhere, since the island of Italy, Ilva, produces it too, and they are recognized with the least difficulty, the color of the earth itself being plain. The method of smelting the veins is the same; in Cappadocia only there is a question whether the credit belongs to the water or to the earth, since the earth, when drenched by the river Cerasus, yields iron from the furnaces in no other way. The differences of iron are many.

143| The first lies in the kind of earth or climate: some supply only a soft iron close to lead, others a brittle and bronzy iron which is above all to be avoided for the uses of wheels and for nails, and for which the former method is suitable; another is liked only for its shortness and for soldiers' hobnails, another feels rust more quickly. All these are called strictures, which is not said of other metals, the name having been given from drawing the edge tight.

144| There is a great difference of furnaces too, and a certain core of iron is smelted in them to harden the edge, and in another manner to compact anvils or the heads of hammers. The greatest difference, however, is in the water, into which the glowing metal is plunged again and again. This, more useful in one place than another, has made places famous for the glory of their iron, as Bilbilis in Spain and Turiaso, and Comum in Italy, although there are no iron mines in those places.

145| Of all the kinds, however, the palm belongs to Seric iron; the Seres send this with their garments and skins; second is the Parthian.—Nor are other kinds of iron tempered from pure steel edge, for a softer embrace is mixed with the rest. In our world in one place the vein gives this goodness, as in the Norican, in another the working, as at Sulmo, in another the water, as we have said, since for sharpening, oil-whetstones and water-whetstones differ, and with oil the edge becomes more delicate.

146| And it is a wonder that when the vein is smelted, the iron is liquefied like water, and afterwards is broken up into sponge-like masses. It is the custom to quench the finer iron tools in oil, lest they be hardened by water into brittleness. Human blood takes vengeance on iron, for iron that has been touched by it gathers rust the more quickly.

147| Of the magnet stone, and of the concord which it has with iron, we shall speak in its own place. This is the only material that receives a virtue from that stone and keeps it for a long time, seizing other iron, so that a chain of rings is sometimes seen. The ignorant common people call this living iron, and wounds from such become rougher.

148| This stone is born in Cantabria too, not as that true magnet is, in continuous rock, but in scattered bulbs—so they call it—; I do not know whether it is equally useful for melting into glass, for no one has yet tried; at any rate it infects iron with the same force.—With the magnet stone the architect Timochares had begun to vault the temple of Arsinoe at Alexandria, so that in it an image of iron might seem to hang in the air. His own death intervened, and that of King Ptolemy, who had ordered it to be made for his sister.

149| —Of all the metals the vein of iron is most abundant in Cantabria. On the sea side, where the ocean washes, a very high mountain—incredible to tell—is wholly of this material, as we have said in the circuit of the ocean. Iron heated in fire, unless it is hardened by blows, is spoiled. When red it is not workable by hammering, nor until it begins to whiten. Smeared with vinegar or alum it becomes like bronze.

150| It is protected from rust by cerussa and gypsum and liquid pitch. This is what the Greeks call antipathy in iron. They say indeed that it is done by a certain religious scruple, and that there is an iron chain at the river Euphrates, in the city called Zeugma, with which Alexander the Great joined a bridge there, whose rings, those that have been replaced, are attacked by rust, while the earlier ones are free of it.

151| There is medicine from iron also other than in cutting. For to be encircled by a circle drawn three times around with the point of a blade is good for adults and infants alike against harmful drugs, and to have fixed on the threshold nails pulled out of tombs against nocturnal frenzies, and to be pricked lightly with the point of the blade that has struck a man, against sudden pains of the sides and chest which bring a stabbing. Certain things are cured by burning, and in particular the bite of a mad dog, since even when the disease is far advanced and they dread drink, once the wound is cauterized they are at once set free. Drink heated with glowing iron is also used in many ailments, and in particular for dysentery.

152| Rust itself is also among the remedies, and thus it is handed down that Achilles healed Telephus, whether he did it with a bronze or an iron spear; at any rate he is painted so, scraping it off with his sword. But the rust of iron is scraped from wet iron, from old nails.

153| Its power is to bind, to dry, to stop. Applied, it corrects alopecias. They use it also for roughness of the eyelids and pustules over the whole body, with wax and myrtle oil, and for sacred fires with vinegar, likewise for scab, for whitlows of the fingers and for pterygia in little linen pads. Laid on in fleeces it stops women's fluxes, and for fresh wounds diluted in wine and worked up with myrrh, for condylomata with vinegar. Smeared on, it eases gout too.

154| The scale of iron too is in use, from the edge or points, very similar but of sharper force than rust, for which reason it is also taken against fluxes of the eyes. It stops blood, since wounds are made above all by iron. It also stops women's fluxes. It is applied against ailments of the spleen, and checks haemorrhoids and creeping ulcers. It also helps the eyelids, sprinkled on for a short time like meal.

155| Its chief recommendation, however, is in the hygremplastrum, for cleansing wounds and fistulas, and eating away all callus, and renewing flesh over bones that have been scraped. It is compounded in this way: propolis, 6 obols; Cimolian chalk, 6 drachmas; pounded bronze, 2 drachmas; scale of iron, as much; wax, 10; oil, a sextarius. To these a cerate is added, when wounds need to be cleansed or filled up.

156| Next comes the nature of lead, of which there are two kinds, black and white. The most precious is the white, called by the Greeks cassiteros, and it is fabulously told that it is sought in islands of the Atlantic sea and brought in wickerwork boats covered round with hide. Now it is known to be in Lusitania. It is produced also in Gallaecia at the very surface of the earth, sandy and of black color. It is detected only by weight;

157| small pebbles are mixed in too, especially in dried torrents. The miners wash these sands and cook in furnaces what has settled. It is found also in the gold mines which they call alutiae, where water let in washes out black pebbles, slightly variegated with white, which have the same heaviness as gold, and therefore remain with it in the baskets in which gold is collected; afterwards they are separated in kilns, and when smelted are resolved into white lead.

158| Black lead is not made in Gallaecia, although neighboring Cantabria abounds in black alone, nor silver from the white, though it is made from the black. Black lead cannot be joined with itself without white, nor this with it without oil, nor can white even with itself without black. White had authority in the Trojan times too, with Homer as witness, who called it cassiteros.

159| The origin of black lead is twofold; for either it comes from its own vein and produces nothing else from itself, or it is born with silver and smelted from mixed veins. The first liquid that came out of the furnaces of this is called stagnum; the second, silver; what remained in the furnaces is galena, which is a third portion of the vein added; this smelted again gives black lead, with 2 ninth parts taken off.

160| Stagnum smeared on bronze vessels makes the taste more pleasant and checks the poison of verdigris, and, wonderfully, does not add to the weight. Mirrors also, most praised, as we have said, were tempered from it at Brundisium, until even maidservants began to use silver ones. Now stagnum is adulterated by the addition of a third portion of white bronze to white lead. It is made also in another way, by mixing pounds of white lead and black; this some now call argentarium. The same call tertiarium that in which there are two portions of black and a third of white. Its price is 20 denarii per pound. With this pipes are soldered.

161| The less scrupulous, adding equal parts of white to the tertiarium, call it argentarium and plate with it what they wish. They make its price 70 denarii per pound. For white by itself, pure, the price is 80 denarii, for black 7. The nature of white has more of the dry, and on the contrary that of black is wholly moist. Therefore white is useful for nothing without a mixture. Nor is silver soldered with it, since silver would melt first,

162| and they affirm that if less black is mixed with the white than is enough, the silver is eaten away by it. White is plated on bronze works, an invention of the Gauls, in such a way that it can hardly be told from silver, and these they call incoctilia. Then they began to plate silver too in the same way, chiefly the ornaments of horses and of pack animals and yokes, at the town of Alesia; the rest of the glory belonged to the Bituriges.

163| Then they began to adorn their carriages, and colisata and petorita, in the same way, a luxury which has now reached golden figurines too, not only silver ones, and what it was extravagant to see on cups is called refinement when worn away on vehicles. The test of white lead is on paper, that it seems to have broken through when melted by its weight, not by heat. India has neither bronze nor lead, and exchanges these for her gems and pearls.

164| Black lead we use for pipes and sheets; it is dug with more labor in Spain and throughout all the Gauls, but in Britain at the very skin of the earth so abundantly that a law is actually laid down that not more than a fixed amount be produced. The kinds of black have these names: Iovetanum, Caprariense, Oleastrense, and there is no difference between them if the slag has been carefully smelted out. It is wonderful that in these mines alone, when abandoned, they come to life again more fertile.

165| Air, let in to satiety through opened vents, seems to do this, just as abortions make some women more fertile. This was lately discovered in Baetica in the Samarian mine, which used to be let at 200,000 denarii a year, and after it had been blotted out was let at 255,000 denarii. In the same way the Antonian mine in the same province, at the same letting, has come to 400,000 sesterces of rent. It is a wonder also that vessels of lead, when water is put in, do not melt, but the same, if a pebble or a bronze quadrans is dropped into the water, are burnt through.

166| In medicine the use of lead by itself is to repress scars, and, with sheets bound on the region of the loins and kidneys, to check by its colder nature the urges of Venus and visions in the sleep of Venus that burst out of nature's own accord to the point of a kind of disease. With these sheets the orator Calvus is said to have restrained himself and to have preserved his bodily strength for the labor of his studies. Nero, the emperor, since the gods so pleased, with a sheet laid on his chest, shouting out songs beneath it, showed the method for nourishing the voice.

167| For medical use it is roasted in earthenware dishes with crumbled sulphur spread underneath, and thin plates of it laid on top and covered with sulphur mixed with iron. While it is being roasted, the breathing passages should be protected during the work; otherwise the noxious exhalation of lead furnaces is felt. It is deadly too, and most swiftly to dogs; and the exhalation of all mines is deadly to flies and gnats, which is why those pests do not occur in mines.

168| Some, in roasting it, mix with the sulphur lead filings obtained with a file; others use cerussa rather than sulphur. Washed lead is also made for use in medicine. Lead is ground against itself in lead mortars with rainwater added, until the mixture thickens; then the water floating on top is taken off with sponges, and what was thickest is dried and divided into pastilles. Some grind filed lead in this way; some also mix in plumbago, others vinegar, others wine, others fat, others rose.

169| Some prefer to grind it with a lead pestle in a stone mortar, above all one of Theban stone, and the medicament comes out whiter that way. Lead that has been burnt, on the other hand, is washed like stibis and cadmea. It can act as an astringent, check fluxes and draw scars together; it is used in the same way in eye-medicines too, especially against prolapse of the eyes, and for the hollows of ulcers or growths, fissures of the seat, haemorrhoids and condylomata.

170| For these purposes washed lead is most effective; the ash of burnt lead, however, is used for creeping or foul ulcers, and the same method of judging its progress applies as with sheets of papyrus. It is burnt in dishes, in small plates, with sulphur, and stirred with iron rods or rods of fennel-giant until the liquid changes into ash; then, once cooled, it is ground to flour. Others cook the filings in an unbaked earthenware vessel in kilns until the clay is fired through. Some mix in cerussa in equal measure, or barley, and grind it as has been described for the raw lead, and they prefer lead prepared in this way to Cyprian spodium.

171| The slag of lead is also in use. The best is the one that comes nearest to a yellow colour, with no remnants of lead and no look of sulphur, and free of earth. It is broken small and washed in mortars until the water takes on a yellow colour, and it is decanted into a clean vessel, and this is done again and again until the most useful part settles. It has the same effects as lead, but sharper. And one is moved to marvel at life's spirit of experiment, which has left not even the dregs of things and the foulness of refuse untried in so many ways.

172| Spodium is also made from lead in the same way as from Cyprian copper. It is washed in loose-woven linen with rainwater, and the earthy part is separated by pouring off; it is sifted and ground. Some prefer to spread this powder out with feathers and to grind it in fragrant wine.

173| There is also molybdaena, which in another place we have called galena, a vein shared by silver and lead. It is better the more it has the colour of gold and the less it is leaden; it should be crumbly and moderately heavy. Cooked with oil, it takes on the colour of liver. It also forms on the furnaces of gold and silver, and this kind they call 'metallic'. The most highly praised is that produced at Zephyrium; those are approved which are least earthy and least stony. They are roasted and washed in the manner of slag.

174| It is used in lipara, to soothe and cool ulcers, and in plasters which are not bound on but, simply smeared on, bring wounds to a scar in tender bodies and the softest parts. The recipe is 3 pounds of it to a pound of wax and 3 heminae of oil; for an aged body, lees of oil are added. Mixed with spuma argenti and slag of lead, it is applied hot as a fomentation for dysentery and tenesmus.

175| Psimithium, that is, cerussa, is also furnished by the lead-works; the most highly praised is at Rhodes. It is made from the finest shavings of lead set over a vessel of the sharpest vinegar and so dripping into it. What has fallen from the lead into the vinegar itself is dried, milled and sifted, then mixed with vinegar once more, divided into pastilles and dried in the sun in summer. It is also made another way: lead is put into jars of vinegar, which are kept sealed for 10 days; what has formed is scraped off like a mould, and the lead is put back again, until the material is used up.

176| What has been scraped off is ground, sifted and roasted in dishes, being stirred with small rods until it turns red and becomes like sandaraca. Then it is washed with fresh water until all the little clouds have been washed out. Afterwards it is dried in the same way and divided into pastilles. Its virtue is the same as that of the substances described above, except that it is the mildest of them all; besides, it serves to whiten women's complexions. It is, however, lethal if drunk, like spuma argenti. Cerussa itself, moreover, if it is roasted, turns red.

177| The nature of sandaraca too has been more or less described. It occurs in gold mines as well as in silver mines. It is better the redder it is and the more it gives off the rank smell of sulphur, and when it is pure and crumbly. It serves to cleanse, to check fluxes, to heat and to erode; its supreme gift is as a septic. Applied with vinegar it fills in alopecias; it is added to eye-medicines; taken with honey it clears the throat and makes the voice clear and tuneful; taken in food with terebinth resin it is a pleasant remedy for the short-winded and those with a cough; and burnt as a fumigation with cedar, it treats the same complaints by its very fumes.

178| Arrhenicum too is made of the same material. The best is of a colour that would be outstanding even in gold; what is paler or resembles sandaraca is judged inferior. There is also a third kind, in which a golden colour is mingled with the colour of sandaraca. These last two are both scaly, but the first is dry and pure, and splits along a fine course of veins. Its virtue is the same as above, but sharper. So it is added both to caustics and to depilatories. It also removes pterygia of the fingers, fleshy growths in the nostrils, condylomata and whatever grows to excess. To make it more effective, it is roasted in a new earthenware pot until it changes colour.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/pliny/045-natural-history-book-xxxiv#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

← All of Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder: Letters, Panegyricus & Natural History