[962] Cap. 33.
[963] Symposiacs, II, 7. D’Arcy W. Thompson in his translation of Aristotle’s History of Animals comments on II, 14, “The myth of the ‘ship-holder’ has been elegantly explained by V. W. Elkman, ‘On Dead Water,’ in the Reports of Nansen’s North Polar Expedition, Christiania, 1904.”
[964] See above p. 77 for the somewhat different statement of Pliny (NH, XXIII, 64).
[965] Symposiacs, V, 10.
[966] De sera numinis vindicta, 14.
[967] De defectu oraculorum, 43.
[968] X, 1 (Casaub., 446); for this and some other source citations and a brief bibliography of modern discussions on the subject see the article, “Amiantus” (3) in Pauly-Wissowa.
[969] Article on “Asbestos” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, which further states that Charlemagne was said to own a tablecloth which was cleaned by throwing it into the fire, and that in 1676 a merchant from China exhibited to the Royal Society a handkerchief of “salamander’s wool” or linum asbesti (asbestos linen). See also Marco Polo, I, 42, and Cordier’s note in Yule (1903), I, 216.
[970] XIX, 4. In Bostock and Riley’s English translation, note 44 states that “the wicks of the inextinguishable lamps of the middle ages, the existence of which was an article of general belief, were said to be made of asbestus.” On its use in lamp-wicks see also Pausanias, I, 26, 7.
[971] “In the year 1702 there was found near the Naevian Gate at Rome a funeral urn, in which there was a skull, calcined bones, and other ashes, enclosed in a cloth of asbestus of a marvelous length. It is still preserved in the Vatican,” (Bostock and Riley, note 45).