8. For example, which of the ancients can be found to have used
vermilion otherwise than sparingly, like a drug? But today whole walls
are commonly covered with it everywhere. Then, too, there is malachite
green, purple, and Armenian blue. When these colours are laid on, they
present a brilliant appearance to the eye even although they are
inartistically applied, and as they are costly, they are made exceptions
in contracts, to be furnished by the employer, not by the contractor.

I have now sufficiently explained all that I could suggest for the
avoidance of mistakes in stucco work. Next, I shall speak of the
components as they occur to me, and first I shall treat of marble, since
I spoke of lime at the beginning.

CHAPTER VI

MARBLE FOR USE IN STUCCO

Marble is not produced everywhere of the same kind. In some places the
lumps are found to contain transparent grains like salt, and this kind
when crushed and ground is extremely serviceable in stucco work. In
places where this is not found, the broken bits of marble or "chips," as
they are called, which marble-workers throw down as they work, may be
crushed and ground and used in stucco after being sifted. In still other
places--for example, on the borderland of Magnesia and Ephesus--there
are places where it can be dug out all ready to use, without the need of
grinding or sifting, but as fine as any that is crushed and sifted by
hand.

CHAPTER VII

NATURAL COLOURS

As for colours, some are natural products found in fixed places, and dug
up there, while others are artificial compounds of different substances
treated and mixed in proper proportions so as to be equally serviceable.

1. We shall first set forth the natural colours that are dug up as such,
like yellow ochre, which is termed [Greek: ochra] in Greek. This is
found in many places, including Italy, but Attic, which was the best, is
not now to be had because in the times when there were slaves in the
Athenian silver mines, they would dig galleries underground in order to
find the silver. Whenever a vein of ochre was found there, they would
follow it up like silver, and so the ancients had a fine supply of it to
use in the polished finishings of their stucco work.

2. Red earths are found in abundance in many places, but the best in
only a few, for instance at Sinope in Pontus, in Egypt, in the Balearic
islands of Spain, as well as in Lemnos, an island the enjoyment of whose
revenues