that depends upon Man’s talent for making Art reproduce Nature, we cannot help marvelling that there is almost nothing that is not brought to a finished state by means of fire. Fire takes this or that sand, and melts it, according to the locality, into glass, silver, cinnabar,^a lead of one kind or another,^b pigments or drugs. It is fire that smelts ore into copper, fire that produces iron and also tempers it, fire that purifies gold, fire that burns the stone^c which causes the blocks in buildings to cohere. There are other substances that may be profitably burnt several times; and the same substance can produce something different after a first, a second or a third firing. Even charcoal itself begins to acquire its special property only after it has been fired and quenched: when we presume it to be dead it is growing in vitality. Fire is a vast, unruly element, and one which causes us to doubt whether it is more a destructive or a creative force.

LXIX. Fire even by itself has a curative power. It is well established that epidemics caused by an eclipse of the sun are alleviated in many ways by the lighting of bonfires. Empedocles and Hippocrates have proved this in various passages of their writings. ‘For abdominal cramp or bruises,’ states Marcus Varro, and I quote his very words, ‘your hearth should be your medicine chest. Drink lye^d made from its ashes, and you will be cured. One can see how gladiators after a combat are helped by drinking this.’ Moreover, anthrax, a disease which, as I haveXXVI. 5. mentioned, lately carried off two ex-consuls, may