Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/450

 372 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io<- s. iv. NOV. 4, IMS a mere transcription in Latin letters* of a Greek word evidently mentioned by the two Greek writers whorn Pliny quotes, Zeno- themis and Sotacus. We have thus sufficient warrant for accepting as certain that the designation (•>}) Ktpavvla A.i0os or (o) Kepavvir^ Ai'0o« was in common use with ancient Greeks. The fact, moreover, that Sotacus affirmed that those stones "resemble axes [ir«A.eK«s] in shape" supplies the link con- necting these terms with the Byzantine do~rpotre	KU>v, if applied to a stone. Now, this statement of Sotacus, and what immediately follows in Pliny, i.e., that a certain kind of such stones "is much in request for the practices of magic, it never being found in any place but one that has been struck by lightning" ; that the thunder- stone bronlea (55) " falls with thunder " ; that the shower-stone ombria (65) " falls with showers and lightning much in the same manner as ceraunia"— all this, which the uncritical and credulous Pliny narrates, with much else of the same value, is, on the face of it, a mixture of fact and superstition, of geology and folk - lore, in which it is possible to pick up the end of the web of scientific truth. Clearly, the name of KtpoLvvirr)s must have been applied primarily to meteorites, which no doubt gave rise at first to all kinds of superstitious beliefs and magical impostures. The fall of meteorites, being a fact of no rare occurrence, was then received as the only available explanation of the source and nature of certain other stones, bright, usually polished and shaped—to wit the celts, stone imple- ments, arrow - heads, and ares, which to this day are popularly known in the English language as ax-stone,t storm-stone, thunder- stone,:!: thunder-hammer, thunder-axe, or simply thunderbolt (see 'Century Diet.' and ' New Eng. Diet.'). It is not difficult to conceive how, by a confusion of facts and a muddling of ideas, certain precious stones, iridescent, luminous, and with a flashing effect, came to be included in a loosely defined category of minerals and enumerated by Pliny (ib. 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 65, 73), asteria, astrion, astriotes, astrobolos, brontia, ombria, astrapaea, from aorjjp, a star, fipovTi), thunder, 0)8/005, a shower, davpainrj, lightning. t Parker Cleaveland (' Eleni. Treatise of Mineral.,' second ed., Boston, N.E., 1822. pp. 269,340), refer- ring to the stones mentioned by Pliny, supposes they are varieties of jasper or of the "axe-stone." t H. Mandrell (' Journey from Aleppo to Jeru- salem,' 1697) describes certain atones " vulgarly c»U'd thunder-stones." worked stones, which were supposed to have dropped from the clouds. From the foregoing it becomes evident that the Byzantines, in accepting a new name for Kepawos, or in giving more general currency to an already extant alternative designation, dorpojrcAe'Kvs, renamed aorpo- ireXtKiov the KcpavviTrjs At#os. In conclusion, perhaps I may be permitted to note the following curious fact: Marbode (Marbodus or Marbodeus), Bishop of Rennes (+1123), a famous Latinist of his time, ren- dered into Latin verse for the use of Philippe Auguste a work on gems, which was said to have been composed originally in Greek by Evax, an Arabian physician. This reputed original is not known to exist, but the ' De gemmarurn lapiduraque preciosorum formis, naturis atque viribus opusculum,' was first printed in 1511, and several times since then. The Lubeck edition of 1575, which pretends to be the first, bears this title : ' De gemmis scriptum Evacis Regis Arabum : olim a poeta quodam in Carmine redditum.' It is included in Migne's ' Patrologia ' (vol. clxxi.), accompanied by a quaint old French version, and the 'Poemes de Marbode'were recently republished, with a metrical French transla- tion by S. Ropartz, at llennes, 1873. In § 30 (28),' De Ceraunio,' the following lines occur:— Ventorum rabie cum turbidus aestuat aer, Cum i' Hi-it horrendum, cum fulgurat igueus aether, Nubibus illisis, coelo cadit iste lapillus, Cujus apud Graecos exstat de fulmine nomen. I His quippe locis quos constat fulmine tactoa, Iste Ceraunios est Uraeco sermone vocatus ; Nam quod nos fulnien, Graeci dixere ceraunon. '-.'in caste gerit hunc, a fulmine non ferictur, .V'' domus, aut villae, quibus assuerit lapis ille, 4c. The good bishop might well have taken all this bodily from Pliny. Since the above was written, MR. PIER- POINT has kindly informed me that he has met with mention of the "ceraunia" stone, besides Pliny, in some of the later Latin writers: Claudian('LausSerenae,'74);Sidonins Apollinaris ('Carm.,' v. 49); Aelius Lampri- dius (' Heliogab.,' c. 33). Columella (' De Re Rust.,' iii. 2) speaks of a kind of grapes as "cerauniae." J. GENNADIUS. The reply signed ROBERT PIERPOINT re- minds me of my own suggestion for the Baskish word izarri, meaning marble, namely, that it is formed from imr and am', literally star - stone, alluding to the shining specks which characterize this product of the mountains. For the contrac- tion there is the model of sagardo=cider, formed from sa^a»-=apple, and ardo, a variant
 * So also the names of certain other stones