The substance called “antispodos”[1649] is produced from the ashes of the fig-tree or wild fig, or of leaves of myrtle, together with the more tender shoots of the branches. The leaves, too, of the wild olive[1650] furnish it, the cultivated olive, the quince-tree, and the lentisk; unripe mulberries also, before they have changed their colour, dried in the sun; and the foliage of the box, pseudo-cypirus,[1651] bramble, terebinth and œnanthe.[1652] The same virtues have also been found in the ashes of bull-glue[1653] and of linen cloth. All these substances are burnt in a pot of raw earth, which is heated in a furnace, until the earthenware is thoroughly baked. CHAP. 36.—SMEGMA. In the copper forges also smegma[1654] is prepared. When the metal is liquefied and thoroughly smelted, charcoal is added to it and gradually kindled; after which, upon it being suddenly acted upon by a powerful pair of bellows, a substance is disengaged like a sort of copper chaff. The floor on which it is received ought to be prepared with a stratum of coal-dust. CHAP. 37.—DIPHRYX. There is another product of these furnaces, which is easily distinguished from smegma, and which the Greeks call “diphryx,”[1655] from its being twice calcined. This substance is prepared from three different sources. It is prepared, they say, from a mineral pyrites, which is heated in the furnace until it is converted by calcination into a red earth. It is also made in Cyprus, from a slimy substance extracted from a certain cavern there, which is first dried and then gradually heated, by a fire made of twigs. A third way of making it, is from the residue in the copper-furnaces that falls to the bottom. The difference between the component parts of the ore is this: the copper itself runs into the receivers, the scoriæ make their escape from the furnace, the flower becomes sublimated, and the diphryx remains behind. Some say that there are certain globules in the ore, while being smelted, which become soldered together; and that the rest of the metal is fused around it, the mass itself not becoming liquefied, unless it is transferred to another furnace, and forming a sort of knot, as it were, in the metal. That which remains after the fusion, they say, is called “diphryx.” Its use in medicine is similar to that of the substances mentioned above;[1656] it is desiccative, removes morbid excrescenses, and acts as a detergent. It is tested by placing it on the tongue, which ought to be instantly parched by it, a coppery flavour being perceptible. CHAP. 38.—PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO THE SERVILIAN TRIENS.