EARLY TRADE IX BLACK AND RED CORAL 245 



horny axis of a marine organism was used, from very early 

 times, as an ornament or as a talisman on account of the 

 magical properties attributed to it. 



The uvmradi]^ of the ancient Greeks was, in all 

 probability, a kind of black coral, and was considered to be 

 of value as an antidote to the stings of scorpions and for 

 other medical and magical purposes. 



According to some of the older writers the herb given by 

 Mercury to Ulysses as a charm to protect him from Circe 

 was a piece of Antipathes. Rumphius quotes Salmasius as 

 having written in his notes on Solinus that Antipathes was 

 used as a protection against sorcery. Pliny refers to it in 

 his alphabetical list of stones. He says, Book xxxvii. chap. 

 54, " Antipathes is black and not transparent : the mode of 

 testing for it is by boiling it in milk to which, if genuine, it 

 imparts an odour (?) like that of myrrh. The magicians also 

 assert that it possesses the power of counteracting fascina- 

 tions." Dioscorides regarded Antipathes as a kind of 

 black coral which was possessed of certain medical proper- 

 ties. The substance called Charitoblepharon, mentioned b}^ 

 Pliny {Nat. Hist. xiii. 52), which was said to be particularly 

 efficacious as a love charm and to have been made into 

 bracelets and amulets, was probably some kind of black 

 coral. 



These and other vague references to the substance by 

 ancient Greek and Roman authors do not, it is true, give us 

 any certain clue as to the identitv of their Antipathes, and 

 it is only by indirect circumstantial evidence that the con- 

 clusion is arrived at that it was the axis of one of two or 

 three kinds of marine flexible corals. 



The word Antipathes has been handed down to us from 

 the Greeks, by the Roman writers Pliny and Solinus, and 

 by the naturalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 as the name of one of the flexible corals with a black horny 

 axis. In modern systematic zoology it is the name of one 

 genus of the Antipatharia. It does not follow, however, 

 that what we call Antipathes to-day is the same thing 

 as the Antipathes of the Greeks and Romans. In fact, 

 it is almost certain that the ancient writers would have 



