Certain sites enjoyed in antiquity great reputation for their clays. One of the most celebrated was that procured from a mine near the promontory of Cape Kolias,[743] close to Phaleron, from which was produced the paste which gave so much renown to the products of the Athenian Kerameikos. The vases made of it became so fashionable, that Plutarch[744] relates an anecdote of a person who, having swallowed poison, refused to drink the antidote except out of a vessel made of this clay. It seems to have been of a fine quality, but not remarkably warm in tone when submitted to the furnace; ruddle, or red ochre (_rubrica_), being employed to impart to it that rich deep orange glow which distinguishes the finest vases of the best period.[745] Corinth,[746] Knidos, Samos, and various other places famous for their potteries, were provided with fine clays. At Koptos, in Egypt, and in Rhodes, vases were manufactured of an aromatic earth.[747] The extreme lightness of the paste of these vases was remarked by the ancients, and its tenuity is mentioned by Plutarch.[748] That it was an object of ambition to excel in this respect, appears from the two amphorae mentioned by Pliny as preserved in the temple of Erythrae,[749] of extreme lightness and thinness, made by a potter and his pupil when contending which could produce the lightest vase. The thinnest vases which have come down to us are scarcely thicker than pieces of stout paper. Great difference is to be observed in the pastes of vases from widely-separated localities, due either to the composition or to the baking, as has been noted in the case of the terracottas (p. 113). 2. MANUFACTURE OF VASES