The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 6 (of 6)

Among the smaragdi is also included the precious stone known as “tanos.”3031 It comes from Persia, and is of an unsightly green, and of a soiled colour within. There is the chalcosmaragdos3032 also, a native of Cyprus, the face of which is mottled with coppery veins. Theophrastus relates that he had found it stated in the Egyptian histories, that a king of Babylon once sent to the king of Egypt a smaragdus3033 four cubits in length by three in breadth. He informs us, also, that in a temple of Jupiter in Egypt there was an obelisk made of four smaragdi, forty cubits in length, and four in breadth at one extremity, and two at the other. He says, too, that at the period at which he wrote, there was in the Temple of Hercules at Tyrus a large column made of a single smaragdus;3034 though very possibly it might only be pseudo-smaragdus, a kind of stone not uncommonly found in Cyprus, where a block had been discovered, composed, one half of smaragdus, and one half of jasper,3035 and the liquid in which had not as yet been entirely transformed. Apion, surnamed “Plistonices,”3036 has left a very recent statement, that there was still in existence, in his time, in the Labyrinth of Egypt, a colossal statue of Serapis made of a single smaragdus, nine cubits in height.