The word σανδαραχη (sandarache) occurs in Aristotle, and the term αρῥενιχον (arrhenichon) in Theophrastus.[69] Dioscorides uses likewise the same name with Aristotle. It was applied to a scarlet-coloured mineral, which occurs native, and is now known by the name of realgar. It is a compound of arsenic and sulphur. It was employed in medicine both externally and internally, and is recommended by Dioscorides, as an excellent remedy for an inveterate cough.
Auripigmentum and arsenicum were names given to the native yellow sulphuret of arsenic. It was used in the same way, and considered by Dioscorides and Pliny as of the same nature with realgar. But there is no reason for supposing that the ancients were acquainted with the compositions of either of these bodies; far less that they had any suspicion of the existence of the metal to which we at present give the name of arsenic.
Such is a sketch of the facts known to the ancients respecting metals. They knew the six malleable metals which are still in common use, and applied them to most of the purposes to which the moderns apply them. Scarcely any information has been left us of the methods employed by them to reduce these metals from their ores. But unless the ores were of a much simpler nature than the modern ores of these metals, of which we have no evidence, the smelting processes with which the ancients were familiar, could scarcely have been contrived without a knowledge of the substances united with the different metals in their ores, and of the means by which these foreign bodies could be separated, and the metals isolated from all impurities. This doubtless implied a certain quantity of chemical knowledge, which having been handed down to the moderns, served as a foundation upon which the modern science of chemistry was gradually reared: at the same time it will be admitted that this foundation was very slender, and would of itself have led to little. Most of the oxides, sulphurets, &c., and almost all the salts into which these metallic bodies enter, were unknown to the ancients.
Besides the working in metals there were some other branches of industry practised by the ancients, so intimately connected with chemical science, that it would be improper to pass them over in silence. The most important of these are the following:
II.—COLOURS USED BY PAINTERS.
It is well known that the ancient Grecian artists carried the art of painting to the highest degree of perfection, and that their paintings were admired and sought after by the most eminent and accomplished men of antiquity; and Pliny gives us a catalogue of a great number of first-rate pictures, and a historical account of a vast many celebrated painters of antiquity. In his own time, he says, the art of painting had lost its importance, statues and tablets having came in place of pictures.
Two kinds of colours were employed by the ancients; namely, the florid and the austere. The florid colours, as enumerated by Pliny, were minium, armenium, cinnaberis, chrysocolla, purpurissum, and indicum purpurissum.
The word minium as used by Pliny means red lead; though Dioscorides employs it for bisulphuret of mercury or cinnabar.
Armenium was obviously an ochre, probably of a yellow or orange colour.
Cinnaberis was bisulphuret of mercury, which is known to have a scarlet colour. Dioscorides employs it to denote a vegetable red colour, probably similar to the resin at present called dragon’s blood.