There is a part of Syria which is known as Phoenicia, bordering Judaea, which contains, between the slopes of Mount Carmel, a swamp called Candebia. This is believed to be the source of the River Belus, which covers a distance of five miles before emptying into the sea beside the colony of Ptolemais. This river is slow in it course, unclean to drink, but sacred for religious purposes, muddy, deep, and reveals its sands only when the tide is out, for they glisten once the motion of the waves has removed their dull impurities. It is thought that the sand is cleansed by the bite of the seawater and only then, and not a moment sooner, becomes useful.

The coast isn’t more than half a mile in extent but was nonetheless the only place for producing glass for many centuries. The story goes that a ship that traded in soda put in here and its men spread out along the shore and began to prepare a meal. Finding they had no way of propping up their cauldrons for lack of rocks, they placed lumps of soda from their ship under them instead, and when these were kindled and began to merge with the sand of the beach, streams of a novel kind of translucent liquid began to flow, and this was the origin of glass.

Soon, as is usual where creative genius is concerned, man was not satisfied with mixing in soda alone; loadstone started to be added, since it was predicted that it might attract liquid glass in the same way as it does iron. In much the same way, a variety of shiny pebbles began to be used, then shells and sand. Writers say that in India it is made of broken crystal, on account of which nothing compares with Indian glass.

On the Dolphin

In his encyclopaedia, Pliny the Elder described the dolphin as ‘the very fastest of animals, not only of sea creatures, faster than a bird’. It has a wide short tongue which, he wrote, was ‘not unlike a pig’s’. Dolphin stories were popular in antiquity. One of the most famous featured a musician named Arion, who was said to have plunged into the sea to escape some evil sailors who were pursuing him, only to be saved by a dolphin. The first story in this passage from the Natural History is set in the Bay of Naples, where Pliny the Elder served as admiral of the imperial fleet. The second story also appears in a letter written by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, decades later.

The dolphin is an animal that is well-disposed not only to man but to the art of music as well. He is soothed by harmonious song and especially by the sound of the water-organ. He is not frightened of man as of a stranger, but comes to greet ships, enjoys playfully leaping about them, and indeed races them even when they’re in full sail.