Chrysolite A opposes eye ailments entirely.
Chryselectrum. If this is worn around the neck, it dispels fevers.
Chrysoprase. This, when worn around the wrist, provides sharpness of vision; it heals stomach and heart pains, and dissolves swellings and tumors.
Chalazias. This is white and solid, and similar to a small crystal. When tied on, it heals the stings of scorpions.
Topaz. The stone is transparent, resembling glass. It grows in what is called the Arabian Gulf on a certain island in the sea. During the day it cannot be seen, for the sun hides its brightness; but at night it shines from afar. It is found rough and uneven, but is smoothed by mechanical instruments. This stone, when ground down and drunk, restores the raving to their original state; it achieves the same result even if worn as an amulet.
Many have dared to provide the causes of the powers found in these stones—among the more ancient sages, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus; and among those who lived not long before us, Alexander of Aphrodisias, a man, to put it simply, most ready to explain all things, even those of nature that are most recondite. Let the power and energy of each stone be sufficient for you; leave the rational explanations and their causes to the treasuries that are above us. B
MICHAEL PSALLUS: EPIGRAM ON SAINT GREGORY NAZIANZEN
See Vol. XXXV, Works of St. Gregory I, col. 309.
OF THE SAME: CHARACTERS OF GREGORY THE THEOLOGIAN, OF BASIL THE GREAT, OF CHRYSOSTOM, AND OF GREGORY OF NYSSA
A 1. You have asked, most learned brother, who and how many among our own wise men have polished their discourses according to the rule of art, and whether they are worthy to be compared to Lysias and Demosthenes in their studious preparation, their moral affect, their choice and composition of words, and further, in their added adornment and concise forms.
2. To these things you ask, I reply that our circle is large, consisting of all those who have excelled in eloquence. Yet I set as the four leaders B of this entire choir: Gregory, the trumpet of theology, and his friend, the great Basil, and Gregory who was born of the same blood as him, and the golden lyre of the Spirit. Each of these is sufficient to be compared with whomever you wish among the Greek sages; not that each one surpasses everyone in all things, but because each is rivaled in certain parts by those among the Greeks who have achieved fame—sometimes coming after them (for one must speak the truth), but more often surpassing them. For I will not behave like those who, having been made judges of both sides, and then following their own will, have not cast their votes according to the merit of each, but as they were hostile to a doctrine, so they behaved as adversaries to the Greeks’ orations, and, being addicted to their own orators, rejected the others as strangers. I shall not do this; I am not so blind. But, granting that those men have power in their orations and have added much to the power of speech, whether through art or beyond art, so then I shall institute the distinction, C opposing some points to others, and give my vote, adding that Gregory the Theologian is among our people what Demosthenes is on the other side. Since, moreover, there are three kinds of eloquence, Demosthenes is most famous in the judicial part and most skilled in deliberative oratory above all others, yet in panegyrical orations he is surpassed by himself and by others; but contrastingly, Gregory, in that genre of eulogies, not only overcomes Demosthenic eloquence—nay, not even, were there a celestial trumpet, is he inferior to it, at least in so far as