stibium

There is a question over what "stibium", the original name of antimony, meant.

Up went one red-gold brow, its darkening of stibium long gone.

The symbol Sb is from the Latin name of 'stibium' for the element.

Scylax burst into tears, streaking his face with stibium.

Later Latin authors adapted the word to Latin as stibium.

It would be interesting to know just how recently a more benign substance than stibium replaced it, but, alas, no work of reference tells me.

Her eyes are coloured with stibium, and her nostrils are shaped like the wings of a swallow.

The name is from the Greek stibi through the Latin stibium as the old name for the mineral and the element antimony.

The 1657 Lexicon Chymicum by William Johnson glosses the word as antimonium sive stibium.

An opinion which was becoming prevalent among all classes as every day his uninspiring figure could be seen plodding along with wig askew and stibium garishly applied.

He also describes heating with antimony sulphide (stibium), which would give silver sulphide and a mixture of gold and antimony.

Scylax ran his hands through his carefully arranged, dyed golden locks; he fluttered his long lashes, darkened with stibium, and rolled his eyes between them.

A black antimony-based powder soluble in water, stibium was used to darken the brows and/or lashes, or to draw a line around the perimeter of the eye.

The Clodias, she had to admit, were both exquisite: lovely dresses, exactly the right jewelry (and not too much of it), touches only of stibium and carmine.

The use of Sb as the standard chemical symbol for antimony is due to Jöns Jakob Berzelius, who used this abbreviation of the name stibium.

She bathed, then scented herself with attar of roses, but her hair was dragged back into its uncompromising bun, and she refused her mother's offering of a little rouge and stibium.

The silly wig was always on his head, and now that the outbreaks on his face were under control he had taken once more to painting his frost-fair brows and lashes with stibium.

A big but well-proportioned woman, the Queen had taken special care with her appearance; her golden hair was done in Greek style, her greenish-brown eyes ringed with stibium, her cheeks daubed with red chalk-powder, her lips carmined, and her hands and feet dark brown from henna.

But Publius Rutilius Rufus had seen him in more urgent circumstances, and knew that tonight, as was his wont, he had applied stibium to them; for in reality, Sulla's brows and lashes were so fair they only showed at all because his skin was a pallid, almost unpigmented white.

He looked marvelous, the thick red-gold hair barbered to bring out the best of its waves, his white skin flawless, his brows and lashes dark enough to show up (had they only known it, he touched them with a trace of stibium, otherwise they virtually disappeared), his eyes as glacially compelling as a blue-eyed cat's.