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ALABASTER. This mineral is noticed by Pliny , whomentions that vases were frequently made of Alabaster stone,for the purpose of containing odoriferous liquors.
ALCHEMY. The origin and antiquity of this scienceare much controverted ; if regard may be had to legend andtradition, it must be as old as the flood, but in effect, not oneof the ancient poets, philosophers, or chemists make mentionof it. It is first noticed by the Empress Eudocia , in herGreek dictionary, wherein she observes as follows, concerningthe famous golden fleece" Dionysius, the Mytilenean, says,that a man, whose name was Krius, (which signifies a ram),was the pedagogue of Phryxus, and that the sheep-skin hada golden fleece, not conformable to poetic assertion, but tliatit was a book written in skins, containing the manner in whichgold ought to be made, according to the chymic art.” ThisDionysius lived sometime prior to Cicero . Manetho , wholived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, also states, in hisfourth book of Apotiles Matica, "that Venus, in conjunctionwith Phrcton, (the sun), points out makers of gold, andworkers of Indian ivory.” Alchemy seems to have been firstregularly studied some short time prior to the Christian iEra,and to have been known to the Romans, as both Caesar andDioclesian directed all books which treated upon the subjectto be burned, and banished such as practised the art; thoughthe word itself can be only traced to the time of Constan-tine, in whose reign Julius Fermicus Maternus, speak-ing of the influence of the heavenly bodies, affirms in hisMatliesis, " that if the Moon be in the house of Saturn atthe time a child is born, he shall be skilled in Alchemy, '’ Theart was much practised in Greece , in the time of Zosimus the Panoplite, who lived about the commencement of thefifth century, and wrote an express treatise on this subject,which he entitled “The Divine Art of making Gold.”