204 SCIENCE IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 



potassium and of sodium, how to render fabrics incom- 

 bustible, how to treat minerals. Some substances, like 

 alum, were used for the same purposes as at the present 

 time. The manufacture of pigments, which implies 

 chemical reactions, was far advanced at the time of the 

 great Greek painters. But it was more particularly in 

 the preparation of poisons that antiquity excelled. 

 Owing to the limitations of the science of the time, the 

 same name was often given to very different substances. 

 Thus xalnac, denoted either copper, or its various alloys 

 with tin, zinc, lead or other metals." x The Romans 

 merely practised, without developing, the science which 

 they received from Greece and Egypt. 



Although very ancient, chemistry did not produce any 

 systematic publications until relatively late. In fact 

 it was in the Alexandrian period, under the Ptolemies, 

 that there appeared for the first time a work sum- 

 marizing the metallurgical and chemical knowledge of 

 the period. This work was published under the name 

 of Democritus, but its author was in reality a certain 

 Bolos, who lived about 250 to 200 B.C. Inspired by 

 him, there arose a series of writings, the most important 

 of which is entitled Physica et Mystica by Democritus, 

 which, in four books, treats of gold, silver, pearls and 

 precious stones, and lastly of the manufacture of purple. 

 It is probable that the first alchemistic and hermetic 

 treatises also belong to this period. 2 



Unfortunately we only possess fragments of all this 

 literature. These, however, are sufficient to show that 

 the idea of the transmutation of elements was already 

 common, as also the belief that a single substance 

 (prima materia) is the base of all material bodies. 



Of the manuscripts relating to chemistry the most 



1 L. Laurand, Les Sciences dans Vantiquitd, Picard, Paris, 

 1923, p. 29. — For the terminology and composition of minerals, 

 see 1 Berthelot, Introduction, pp. 228-268. 



2 10 Diels, Antike, p. 113. 



