APPENDIX. 



yield a certain soft stone, which was wont to be drawn into a 

 fine thread ; for I suppose some here have seen towels, net- 

 work, and quoifs woven of that thread which could not be 

 burnt ; but when they were soiled with using, people flung 

 them into the fire, and took them thence white and clean, 

 the fire only purifying them. But all this is vanished, and 

 there is nothing but some few fibres, or hairy threads, lying 

 up and down scatteringly in the grain of the stones, to be 

 seen now in the quarry."* 



Atraclan, from Atrax, a town on the river Peneus, not far 

 from the celebrated vale of Tempe, in Thessaly, whence it 

 was also called Thessalium. 



The ancients included all the rocks used in sculpture or 

 architecture under the name of marbles ; but the verde antico, 

 which is really a serpentine marble, is mentioned by so many 

 ancient writers as the most cheerful of all, with veins of a 

 grassy appearance winding in a spiral manner, and present- 

 ing white parts when polished, that no reasonable doubt can 

 be entertained of its being the Laconian sort. 



Paul Silentiarius, in the sixth century, wrote a poem, in 

 which he describes the decorations of the famous church of 

 St. Sophia, then erected by the Emperor Justinian at Con- 

 stantinople. The subject led him to a minute description of 

 the most celebrated ancient marbles ; and that of the Atra- 

 cian, contained in six lines, may be thus literally translated. 

 <( Whatever the Atracian land produces in the plains, not in 

 the high mountains as the other rocks, in some parts of a 

 light green not far from the colour of the emerald, in others 

 proceeding to a deep and full green. There is also something 

 like snow added to a black splendour ; all which concur to 

 form one beautiful whole." From other passages of ancient 

 writers, it appears that this stone is described in the mass, as 

 being of a leek green j whereas the Laconian is mentioned as 



* Plutarch's Moral Treatises, iv. 54. Tournefort, Travels, i. 176, men- 

 tions amianthus from Carysius, as being now an inferior kind, imposed on th6 

 ignorant as plumose alum. 



597 



