Eretria was named from the place where it was found. Pliny gives its medical properties, but does not inform us of its colour. It is impossible to say what it was.
Auripigmentum was yellow sulphuret of arsenic. It was probably but little used as a pigment by the ancient painters.
Cerussa usta was red lead.
Sandaracha was red sulphuret of arsenic. The pound of sandaracha cost 5 as.: it was imitated by red lead. Both it and ochra were found in the island Topazos in the Red Sea.
Sandyx was made by torrefying equal parts of true sandaracha and sinopis. It cost half the price of sandaracha. Virgil mistook this pigment for a plant, as is obvious from the following line:
Sponte sua sandix, pascentes vestiet agnos.70
Siricum is made by mixing sinopis and sandyx.
Atramentum was obviously from Pliny’s account of it lamp-black. He mentions ivory-black as an invention of Apelles: it was called elephantinum. There was a native atramentum, which had the colour of sulphur, and got a black colour artificially. It is not unlikely that it contained sulphate of iron, and that it got its black colour from the admixture of some astringent substance.
The ink of the ancients was lamp-black mixed with water, containing gum or glue dissolved in it. Atramentum indicum was the same as our China ink.
The purpurissum was a high-priced pigment. It was made by putting creta argentaria (a species of white clay) into the caldrons containing the ingredients for dying purple. The creta imbibed the purple colour and became purpurissum. The first portion of creta put in constituted the finest and highest-priced pigment. The portions put in afterwards became successively worse, and were, of consequence lower priced. We see, from this description, that it was a lake similar to our modern cochineal lakes.71
That the purpurissum indicum was indigo is obvious from the statement of Pliny, that when thrown upon hot coals it gives out a beautiful purple flame. This constitutes the character of indigo. Its price in Pliny’s time was ten denarii, or six shillings and five-pence halfpenny the Roman pound; which is equivalent to 8s. 7⅓d. the avoirdupois.
Though few or none of the ancient pictures have been preserved, yet several specimens of the colours used by them still remain in Rome and in the ruins of Herculaneum. Among others the fresco paintings, in the baths of Titus, still remain; and as these were made for a Roman emperor, we might expect to find the most beautiful and costly colours employed in them. These paints, and some others, were examined by Sir Humphrey Davy, in 1813, while he was in Rome. From his researches we derive some pretty accurate information respecting the colours employed by the painters of Greece and Rome.
1. Red paints. Three different kinds of red were found in a chamber opened in 1811, in the baths of Titus, namely, a bright orange red, a dull red, and a brown red. The bright orange red was minium, or red lead; the other two were merely two varieties of iron ochres. Another still brighter red was observed on the walls; it proved, on examination, to be vermilion or cinnabar.
2. Yellow paints. All the yellows examined by Davy proved to be iron ochres, sometimes mixed with a little red lead. Orpiment was undoubtedly employed, as is obvious from what Pliny says on the subject: but Davy found no traces of it among the yellow colours which he examined. A very deep yellow, approaching orange, which covered a piece of stucco in the ruins near the monument of Caius Cestius, proved to be protoxide of lead, or massicot, mixed with some red lead. The yellows in the Aldobrandini pictures were all ochres, and so were those in the pictures on the walls of the houses at Pompeii.
3. Blue paints. Different shades of blues are used in the different apartments of the baths of Titus, which are darker or lighter, as they contain more or less carbonate of lime with which the blue pigment had been mixed by the painter. This blue pigment turned out, on examination, to be a frit composed of alkali and silica, fused together with a certain quantity of oxide of copper. This was the colour called χυανος (kyanos) by the Greeks, and cæruleum by the Romans. Vitruvius gives the method of preparing it by heating strongly together sand, carbonate of soda, and filings of copper. Davy found that fifteen parts by weight of anhydrous carbonate of soda, twenty parts of powdered opaque flints, and three parts of copper filings, strongly heated together for two hours, gave a substance exactly similar to the blue pigment of the ancients, and which, when powdered, produced a fine deep blue colour. This cæruleum has the advantage of remaining unaltered even when the painting is exposed to the actions of the air and sun.
There is reason to suspect, from what Vitruvius and Pliny say, that glass rendered blue by means of cobalt constituted the basis of some of the blue pigments of the ancients; but all those examined by Davy consisted of glass tinged blue by copper, without any trace of cobalt whatever.
4. Green paints. All the green paints examined by Davy proved to be carbonates of copper, more or less mixed with carbonate of lime. I have already mentioned that verdigris was known to the ancients. It was no doubt employed by them as a pigment, though it is not probable that the acetic acid would be able to withstand the action of the atmosphere for a couple of thousand years.
5. Purple paints. Davy ascertained that the colouring matter of the ancient purple was combustible. It did not give out the smell of ammonia, at least perceptibly. There is little doubt that it was the purpurissum of the ancients, or a clay coloured by means of the purple of the buccinum employed by the Syrians in the celebrated purple dye.
6. Black and brown paints. The black paints were lamp-black: the browns were some of them ochres and some of them oxides of manganese.
7. White paints. All the ancient white paints examined by Davy were carbonates of lime.72 We know from Pliny that white lead was employed by the ancients as a pigment; but it might probably become altered in its nature by long-continued exposure to the weather.
III.—GLASS.
It is admitted by some that the word which in our English Bible is translated crystal, means glass, in the following passage of Job: “The gold and the crystal cannot equal it.”73 Now although the exact time when Job was written is not known, it is admitted on all hands to be one of the oldest of the books contained in the Old Testament. There are strong reasons for believing that it existed before the time of Moses; and some go so far as to affirm that there are several allusions to it in the writings of Moses. If therefore glass were known when the Book of Job was written, it is obvious that the discovery of it preceded the commencement of history. But even though the word used in Job should not refer to glass, there can be no doubt that it was known at a very early period; for glass beads are frequently found on the Egyptian mummies, and they are known to have been embalmed at a very remote period. The first Greek author who uses the word glass (ὑαλος, hyalos) is Aristophanes. In his comedy of The Clouds, act ii. scene 1, in the ridiculous dialogue between Socrates and Strepsiades, the latter announces a method which had occurred to him to pay his debts. “You know,” says he, “the beautiful transparent stone used for kindling fire.” “Do you mean glass (τον ὕαλον, ton hyalon)?” replied Socrates. “I do,” was the answer. He then describes how he would destroy the writings by means of it, and thus defraud his creditors. Now this comedy was acted about four hundred and twenty-three years before the beginning of the Christian era. The story related by Pliny, respecting the discovery of this beautiful and important substance, is well known. Some Phœnician merchants, in a ship loaded with carbonate of soda from Egypt, stopped, and went ashore on the banks of the river Belus: having nothing to support their kettles while they were dressing their food, they employed lumps of carbonate of soda for that purpose. The fire was strong enough to fuse some of this soda, and to unite it with the fine sand of the river Belus: the consequence of this was the formation