Cinnabar

Theophrastus has a discussion about the stone  cinnabar in reference of stone being either natural or artificial. Cinnabar, made of mercury sulfide (HgS), was discovered on the Iberian peninsula similar to the kind of cinnabar found at Colchis as being hard. He claimed that the cinnabar was found on the side of an Iberian cliff and was mined by the process of shooting arrows at it. Then, he discussed “the other kind”. Ancient cinnabar was also man-made near Ephesus, the only location of its kind. The process of preparing ancient cinnabar begun with sand colored red being collected, pulverized, and washed. The wash was done from top-to-bottom, and the artificially made cinnabar was what remained at the bottom. Theophrastus emphasized that using sand in this method did not produce reliable results, so two different people producing cinnabar could have two different results.

The method of preparation was invented by a miner named Kallias who thought bright sand contained gold within it. Upon discovering the sand did not contain gold, the method Kallias used was retained because the resultant stones were beautiful. To give the story more credit, these events transpired 90 years before the Athenian archon, Praxibulus. The point that was being made is that art imitates nature and by doing so, artists can create their own products.

“It is clear from these facts that art imitates nature and creates its own peculiar products, some of them for use, and some only for show, such as paints, and others for both purposes equally, such as quicksilver; for this has its use too.” (from translation, paragraph 60)

Quicksilver is then made by a second process when cinnabar and vinegar are mixed in a copper vessel with a copper pestle. From this knowledge, Theophrastus desired for other products could be made.   

In conclusion, an important consideration should be made here: one is that, Theophrastus philosophized about the development of chemistry; a second is that, Platonic solids in fact describe the geometry of compounds (on the atomic scale).

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Theophrates (371 BC-287 BC), as the student of Aristotle, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school, the school of philosophy at Athens, Greece. His work, On Stones, was used by lapidaries until the early Renaissance and was relatively free from fable and myth. He knew pearls came from shell-fish and spoke of the fossilized remains of organic life. He classified rocks and gems accoding to reactions after being heated. He even metioned coal as a source of heat for metallurgy.