In making use of this word, we have another illustration of the strange adoption of a term which is destitute of any relationship to the characters of the object it is intended to describe. The “sapphirus” of the ancients referred to lapis-lazuli, a blue opaque mineral spotted with minute metallic flakes; and the only significance it bears in connection with any of the forms of corundum is the simple fact that it means azure. If we follow the antiquaries still farther into the mists of early language, in seeking the etymology of the name, we shall probably find even less satisfaction. The nature of this gem, as well as most of the other precious stones, was mere conjecture to the ancients, and they formed their estimate of them chiefly from their hardness and color. Among the early Greeks, Theophrastus strove in vain to discover some satisfactory basis of arrangement for these minerals, and to explain their forms, their constituents, and the manner of their creation. But his efforts and those of his contemporaries were of little avail; and so Ictinus, when he constructed the marvellous façade of the Parthenon, and Phidias, while he adorned it with immortal statues of marble and other stones, were alike ignorant of the nature of the materials they employed in their work. Several centuries later the treatises of the Latin philosopher Pliny show that science had made but little progress in this respect. The people of India and of the valley of the Euphrates, however, undoubtedly studied at a very early period the internal structure of the precious stones, and the revelations thus obtained had some effect in shaping their religion and their views of civilization.