Gems and the Scythian Abyss

Being smeared with milk upon the drawn places. And the law given to Moses on the mountain is said to have appeared upon a sapphire stone. Jasper is emerald-colored, and is found near the mouth of the Marmodotus river, and near Amathus in Cyprus; It helps with seizures.acinth is sub-fiery, and is found in the inner Barbarian lands of Scythia.

The ancients have been accustomed to call Scythia the whole northern climate, where the Goths and Danes are. There, therefore, within the wilderness of Great Scythia, there is a most deep gorge, impassable to men, surrounded here and there by rocky mountains, so that one peering down from the heights of the mountains, as if from walls, is unable to see the ground of the gorge, but from the depth it is darkened like a chaos. In this gorge, those sent from the kings raging there are convicts and are being forced. Having sacrificed rams and having skinned them, they throw them down from the rocks into the chaos of the gorge, and the stones stick in those meats. Eagles, therefore, dwelling above in the rocks, descend toward the smell of the meats, and carry up the rams with the stones attached. In the eating of the meats, the stones remain in the sharp parts of the mountains. And the convicts, having looked to see where they were carried up...