From the book
The Golden Chain of Homer
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger) · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordLead is a white metallic subject treated as relatively open to acid dissolution.
- In the Golden ChainIt links solvent classification, the mercury vocabulary, and the analogy of metallic disease.
- TranslationMercury of lead is a historical operative expression, not automatically isolated quicksilver.
- A place to readB1C23S039–040: lead’s position and the qualifications to the rule.
Meaning
Lead belongs among the white metals whose anatomy is said to show white arsenic and aluminous matter more abundantly than yellow burning sulphur. In the classification by dissolution it is paired with silver as an example whose acid remains relatively open rather than fully fixed and alkalized. The author nevertheless qualifies the rule: lead can also come apart in spirit of salt or aqua regia (B1C23S016; B1C23S039–040).
The apparent overlap is instructive. The categories describe relative conditions and observed responses within the book’s theory, not modern elements assigned once and for all to mutually exclusive acid and alkali classes. Lead is also distinguished from its ore and from the mercurial, glassy, or residual parts discussed in particular operations. The ordinary metal-name does not erase that material history (B1C23S015; B1C23S047).
Use in the book
Lead’s mercury receives special attention when the author considers how fixed powders acquire a metallic nature. He calls lead full of mercury and a highly valued subject for reduction, yet says its mercurial part must be made suitably fusible. The discussion of a volatile glass and of added homogeneous matter belongs to that problem. It does not establish that the historical mercury of lead means liquid elemental mercury physically extracted from every sample (B1C23S046–047).
The same passage warns against confusing refined bodies with their refuse in an account of precipitation. What is discarded at the mines or smelting works may have the desired operative relation, whereas a refined metal may simply mix with another. This reinforces a wider theme of the book: discarded portions are not dregs by their mere location or reputation. Lead is accordingly useful for explaining why material condition and provenance matter more than a prestigious or familiar ingredient-name (B1C23S047; B1C23S051).
Book Two compares lead and tin with iron and copper in their susceptibility to natural alteration, describing the former as becoming a paste. It also gives lead melancholy in the metallic-disease analogy and calls Saturn melancholic. A solar medicine is imagined to temper such differences without creating matter from nothing. These assertions are historical interpretations of metallic transmutation, not evidence that lead has a human illness or that preparations of it provide an appropriate human medicine. Later mineral quintessences remain harmful in the author’s own account until further transformation (B2C04S008; B2C04S012–014; B2C09S013).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §16Lead is a white metal associated with aluminous and arsenical portions.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §39Lead is initially classed as a relatively open acidic subject.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §40Its response to other menstrua qualifies a rigid classification.
- Book I · Ch. 23 · §47Mercury of lead and the distinction between refuse and refined bodies.
- Book II · Ch. 4 · §12Lead’s melancholy belongs to the analogy of metallic disease.
Translation in this edition
Bley and the compound Bley-Mercurius occur in the German exposition; Saturnus appears in the temperament comparison. The English lead-name must not be confused with unrelated uses of the verb lead in prefatory prose. More substantially, the author’s defence of broad mercurial terminology elsewhere governs this entry: a mercury principle, a mercurial condition, and running quicksilver are not interchangeable expressions (B1C23S041–043; B1C23S047; B2C04S013).