Note (28) — BOOK IV.

28. Minium.) Pliny complains that minium, which was used by the painters, was of a poisonous nature, and through ignorance often given in medicine instead of the Indian cinnabar. This last, he says, is believed to be the gore of a dragon crushed by the weight of a dying elephant, with the mixture of the blood of these animals. Minium was found in the silver mines in both the Spains, but hard and sandy; also at Colchos in a certain inaccessible rock, but this was a spurious kind: the best was got near Ephesus.——Minium some of the Greeks call cinnabar, others miltos. Plin. lib. xxix. c. i. & lib. xxxiii. c. 7. Cinnabar, says Dioscorides, some mistake for what is called ammion: for this last is prepared from a certain stone mixed with the silver sand in Spain, and no where else. In the melting pot it changes into a very florid and flame colour: it has a suffocating steam in the mines: the painters make use of it. But cinnabar is brought from Libya, and sold at a great price, in so much that painters can hardly have it for their use: the colour of it is deep, whence some have imagined it to be the blood of a dragon: it has the same virtues as the hæmatites stone. Lib. v. c. 883.—Miltos Sinopica, the best is solid and heavy, of a liver colour, not stony, very thin when melted. It is gathered in Cappadocia in certain caves; it is strained and brought to Sinope, and sold there, whence its name. It possesses a drying quality, and agglutinating, for which reason it is mixed with vulnerary plaisters, and drying and styptick troches. It binds the belly if taken with an egg, and is given in clysters to hepatick patients, Lib. v. c. 885.——Our author elsewhere prescribes minium from Sinope, which makes it probable, that he intended the miltos of Dioscorides. But upon comparing these several descriptions, which it is needless to enlarge upon, the learned reader may determine for himself.