58 The Diamond 



luminous at night" might be the emerald; nor can it be invoked as a 

 contribution to the problem, as the Chinese do not speak of pillars, but 

 of a precious stone. Hirth, further, quotes an account from Pliny 

 contained in his notes on the smaragdus. It is difficult to see what 

 relation it is supposed to have with the subject under discussion, as 

 Pliny does not say a word about these stones shining at night. The 

 story runs thus: "They say that on this island above the tomb of a 

 petty king, Hermias, near the fisheries, there was the marble statue of 

 a lion, with eyes of smaragdi set in, flashing their light into the sea 

 with such force that the tunnies were frightened away and fled, till 

 the fishermen, long marvelling at this unusual phenomenon, replaced the 

 stones by others." 1 The plot of Pliny's story is certainly laid in the 

 daytime, not during the night; fishes, as is well known, being attracted 

 at night by luminous phenomena spreading over the surface of the 

 water, and even being caught by the glare of torch-light. At any rate, 

 the passage contains nothing about jewels brightening the night. 

 Chavannes, more fortunately, points to Lucian (De dea Syria), who 

 describes a statue of the Syrian goddess in Hierapolis bearing a gem on 

 her head called lychnis: "From this stone flashes a great light in the 

 night-time, so that the whole temple gleams brightly as by the light of 

 myriads of candles, but in the daytime the brightness grows faint; the 

 gem has the likeness of a bright fire." 2 The name lychnis is connected 

 with Greek lychnos (" a portable lamp ") . According to Pliny, the stone 

 is so called from its lustre being heightened by the light of a lamp, when 

 its tints are particularly pleasing. 3 Pliny does not say that the lychnis 

 shines at night, 4 but his definition indicates well how this tradition 

 arose. Pseudo-Callisthenes (n, 42) makes Alexander the Great spear 

 a fish, in whose bowels was found a white stone so brilliant that every 

 one believed it was a lamp. Alexander set it in gold, and used it as a 

 lamp at night. 5 The origin of this trivial story is perspicuous enough. 



1 Ferunt in ea insula tumulo reguli Hermiae iuxta cetarias marmoreo leoni fuisse 

 inditos oculos e smaragdis ita radiantibus etiam in gurgitem, ut territi thynni 

 refugerent, diu mirantibus novitatem piscatoribus, donee mutavere oculis gemmas 

 (xxxvn, 17, § 66). Compare Krause, Pyrgoteles, p. 38. 



1 H. A. Strong, The Syrian Goddess, p. 72 (London, 1913). 



1 Ex eodem genere ardentium est lychnis appellata a lucernarum adsensu, turn 

 praecipuae gratiae (xxxvn, 29, § 103). Dionysius Periegetes compares the lychnis 

 with the flame of fire (Krause, /. c, p. 22). Of the various identifications proposed 

 for this stone, that of tourmaline has the greatest likelihood, as Pliny refers to its 

 magnetic property, inasmuch as, when heated or rubbed between the fingers, it will 

 attract chaff and papyrus-fibres. 



4 He does not say so, in fact, with regard to any stone. 



1 It should be noted, however, that in the oldest accessible form of the Romance 

 of Alexander, as critically restored by A. Ausfeld (Der griechische Alexanderroman, 



