Note 357 — BOOK XVI

Pliny’s five books (xxxiii-xxxvii) on mineralogy in his Natural History are the chief source upon which later writers drew. An epitome of them, or rather, an epitome of an epitome, was made by Solinus in the third century. This underwent a further revision in the sixth century. Isidore is supposed to have used both the epitome and the original, as well as an unknown source, from which he drew the medical virtues of the precious stones. Cf. King, The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones (London, 1865), p. 6.