It is added, moreover, that a certain kind of earth was found in Egypt, without which the best kind of coloured glass[1160] could not be produced. Petronius informs us, that, in the reign of Tiberius, a skilful experimentalist discovered the art of rendering this substance malleable, but that the emperor, from some freak of tyranny, put the man to death, and thus his secret was lost to the world.[1161] A similar act of cruelty was perpetrated by the public authorities at Dantzic, who, in the seventeenth century, caused an able mechanician, who had invented a superior kind of ribbon-loom, to be strangled.[1162] ----- Footnote 1160: Strab. ap. Beckmann, History of Inventions, i. 198. Footnote 1161: Satyr. c. 51, p. 25, seq. Burm. Plin. xxxvi. 66. Footnote 1162: Beckmann, iii, 494. ----- CHAPTER VI. INDUSTRY: OIL AND COLOUR MEN.—ITALIAN WAREHOUSES.—DRUGGISTS.—COLLECTORS OF SIMPLES. There was, moreover, produced in Greece, a number of articles, whether of use or luxury, to the venders of which it appears difficult to appropriate a name. It must necessarily be inferred, however, that there existed a class of shopkeepers analogous to our oil and colour men, at whose establishments were found most or all of the following commodities: every kind of vegetable oil, for cookery, painting, or to be burned as lamp-oil, of sea salt, probably for medicinal purposes,[1163] oil of horseradish,[1164] used instead of the root itself, as a condiment. Among the lamp-oils it is worthy of observation that the Greeks included castor oil[1165] which was commonly, from its nauseous effects, eschewed as a medicine. Bitumen[1166] also was occasionally burnt in lamps. Their lampwicks were ordinarily of rushes,[1167] which they sometimes anointed with the oil expressed from the seeds of the myagrum perenne;[1168] and from certain nuts found on the oak they obtained a sort of woolly substance[1169] which, being twisted into wicks, burnt freely without oil. The dried stem of the torch-weed[1170] was likewise employed for this purpose. Their flambeaux consisted originally of slips of the pine or pitch tree,[1171] or even as at Rhodes of the bark of the vine,[1172] but afterwards certain combustible compositions were burned in painted and ornamented handles.[1173] ----- Footnote 1163: Aristoph. Problem. xxiii. 15. Footnote 1164: Ῥαφανέλαιον. Dioscor. i. 45. Footnote 1165: Κίκινον ἔλαιον.—Κικι, οἱ δὲ σήσαμον ἄγριον, οἱ δὲ, σέσελι Κύπριον. Dioscor. iv. 164. Footnote 1166: Dioscor. i. 99. Cf. Herod. 179. Footnote 1167: Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 60. Athen. x. 25. Footnote 1168: Dioscor. iv. 117. Footnote 1169: Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 4. Plin. xviii. 10. Footnote 1170: Poll. i. 229, seq. Footnote 1171: The same torch is still in use in Circassia. J. S. Bell, Journal of a residence in Circassia, ii. 69. Footnote 1172: