6o8 APPENDIX B. 



of light on ancient metallurgy, as for instance in Homer's description of Vulcan's foundry ; 

 while the historians, philosophers, statesmen, and physicians, among them Herodotus, 

 Xenophon, Demosthenes, Galen, and many others, have left some incidental references to the 

 metals and mining, helpful to gleaners from a field, which has been almost exhausted by time. 

 Even Archimedes made pumps, and Hero surveying instruments for mines. 



ROMAN AUTHORS. — Pre-eminent among all ancient writers on these subjects is, of 

 course, Pliny, and in fact, except some few lines by Vitruvius, there is practically little else 

 in extant Roman literature of technical interest, for the metallurgical metaphors of the poets 

 and orators were threadbare by this time, and do not excite so much interest as upon their 

 first appearance among the Greeks and Hebrews. 



Pliny (Caius Plinius Secundus) was born 23 A.D., and was killed by eruption of Vesuvius 

 79 A.D. His Natural History should be more properly called an encyclopsedia, the whole 

 comprising 37 books ; but only portions of the last four books relate to our subject, and over 

 one-half of the material there is upon precious stones. To give some rough idea of the small 

 quantity of even this, the most voluminous of ancient works upon our subject, we have made 

 an estimate that the portions of metallurgical character would cover, say, three pages of 

 this text, on mining two pages, on building and precious stones about ten pages. Pliny 

 and Dioscorides were contemporaries, and while Pliny nowhere refers to the Greek, internal 

 evidence is most convincing, either that they drew from the same source, or that Pliny drew 

 from Dioscorides. We have, therefore, throughout the text given precedence in time to the 

 Greek author in matters of historical interest. The works of Pliny were first printed at Venice 

 in 1469. They have passed dozens of editions in various languages, and have been twice 

 translated into English. The first translation by Philemon Holland, London, 1601, is quite 

 impossible. The second translation, by Bostock and Riley, London, 1855, was a great 

 advance, and the notes are most valuable, but in general the work has suffered from a freedom 

 justifiable in the translation of poetry, but not in science. We have relied upon the Latin 

 edition of Janus, Leipzig, 1870. The frequent quotations in our footnotes are sufficient 

 indication of the character of Pliny's work. In general it should be remembered that he was 

 himself but a compiler of information from others, and, so far as our subjects are concerned, 

 of no other experience than most travellers. When one considers the reliability of such 

 authors to-day on technical subjects, respect for Pliny is much enhanced. Further, the text 

 is no doubt much corrupted through the generations of transcription before it was set in type. 

 So far as can be identified with any assurance, Pliny adds but few distinct minerals to those 

 enumerated by Theophrastus and Dioscorides. For his metallurgical and mining information 

 we refer to the footnotes, and in general it may be said that while those skilled in metallurgy 

 can dimly see in his statements many metallurgical operations, there is little that does not 

 require much deduction to arrive at a conclusion. On geology he offers no new philosophical 

 deductions of consequence ; the remote connection of building stones is practically all that 

 can be enumerated, lest one build some assumption of a knowledge of ore-deposits on the 

 use of the word " vein". One point of great interest to this work is that in his search for Latin 

 terms for technical purposes Agricola relied almost wholly upon Pliny, and by some devotion 

 to the latter we have been able to disentangle some very puzzling matters of nomenclature 

 in De Re Metallica, of which the term molyhdaena may be cited as a case in point. 



Vitruvius was a Roman architect of note of the ist Century B.C. His work of ten 

 books contains some very minor references to pumps and machinery, building stones, and the 

 preparation of pigments, the latter involving operations from which metallurgical deductions 

 can occasionally be safely made. His works were apparently first printed in Rome in 1496. 

 There are many editions in various languages, the first English translation being from the 

 French in 1692. We have relied upon the translation of Joseph Gwilt, London, 1875, with 

 such alterations as we have considered necessary. 



MEDIEVAL AUTHORS. For convenience we group under this heading the writers 

 of interest from Roman times to the awakening of learning in the early i6th Century. 

 Apart from Theophilus, they are mostly alchemists ; but, nevertheless, some are of great 

 importance in the history of metallurgy and chemistry. Omitting a horde of lesser lights 

 upon whom we have given some data under the author's preface, the works principally con- 

 cerned are those ascribed to Avicenna, Theophilus, Geber, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, 

 and Basil Valentine. Judging from the Preface to De Re Metallica, and from quotations in his 

 subsidiary works, Agricola must have been not only familiar with a wide range of alchemistic 

 material, but also with a good deal of the Arabic literature, which had been translated into 

 Latin. The Arabs were, of course, the only race which kept the light of science burning 

 during the Dark Ages, and their works were in considerable vogue at Agricola's time. 



Avicenna (980-1037) was an Arabian physician of great note, a translator of the Greek 

 classics into Arabic, and a follower of Aristotle to the extent of attempting to reconcile the 

 Peripatetic elements with those of the alchemists. He is chiefly known to the world through 

 the works which he compiled on medicine, mostly from the Greek and Latin authors. These 

 works for centuries dominated the medical world, and were used in certa'n European Univer- 

 sities until the 17th century. A great many works are attributed to him, and he is copiously 

 quoted by Agricola, principally in his De Ortu et Causis, apparently for the purpose of 

 exposure. 



