Stones: as heliotrope, mentioned by Boccaccio in his Decameron (day viii. 3). It is of a green hue. Solīnus attributes this power to the herb heliotrope: “Herba ejusdem nominis ... eum, a quocumque gestabitur, suptrahit visibus obviorum.”—Geog., xl.
Invulnerability. Stones taken from the cassan plant, which grows in Pauten, will render the possessor invulnerable.—Odoricus, In Hakluyt.
A dip in the river Styx rendered Achillês invulnerable.
Medea rendered Jason proof against wounds and fire by anointing him with the Promethe´an unguent.—Greek Fable.
Siegfried was rendered invulnerable by bathing his body in dragon’s blood.—Niebelungen Lied.
Ion, the title and hero of a tragedy by T. N. Talfourd (1835). The oracle of Delphi had declared that the pestilence which raged in Argos was sent by way of punishment for the misrule of the race of Argos, and that the vengeance of the gods could be averted only by the extirpation of the guilty race. Ion, the son of the king, offered himself a willing sacrifice, and as he was dying, Irus entered and announced that “the pestilence was abating.”
Io´na’s Saint, St. Columb, seen on the top of the church spires, on certain evenings every year, counting the surrounding islands, to see that none of them have been sunk by the power of witchcraft.
As Iona’s saint, a giant form,
Throned on his towers conversing with the storm ...
Counts every wave-worn isle and mountain hoar