See also Pliny’s section on the pigments artists use.
Here’s an abbreviated, although still somewhat lengthy, version of what he has to say about cinnabar in Healy’s 1991 / 2004 translation from Natural History: A Selection. I’m far too poor to have bought this in the Rackham translation from Loeb.
Cinnabar is also found in silver mines. Nowadays it is of great importance among pigments; formerly it was not only very important but also sacred. (…) On holidays the face of the statue of Jupiter used to be covered with cinnabar, as well as the bodies of those in triumphal processions (…) Cinnabar was added to the perfumes used at the banquet that follows a triumph. (…) One of the most important duties of the censors was to arrange a contract for covering Jupiter with cinnabar. I myself am at a loss as to the origin of this custom, although nowadays cinnabar is in demand among the peoples of Ethiopia, whose leaders cover themselves all over with this; all their cult statues are of the same colour.
(…) Cinnabar was discovered by an Athenian named Callias (…) [in] AUC 349. (…) Callias had hoped that gold could be extracted, by smelting, from the red sand found in silver mines (…) this was the origin of cinnabar. The mineral was, even then, found in Spain, but there it was a hard, sandy type. It also occurred in Colchian territory on a certain inaccessible rock from which the natives brought it down by throwing spears. This cinnabar, however, was of an impure quality; the best is found (…) east of Ephesus, where the sand is the red colour of cochineal beetles.
This sand is ground up (…) the powder is washed and the sediment rewashed. Skill makes a difference; some workers produce cinnabar after one washing, while with others the cinnabar is rather weak and is improved by a second washing. The importance of the colour comes as no surprise to me, for in Trojan times red ochre was valued highly (…) Cinnabar is also produced in Carmania, and (…) Ethiopia as well; but it is not exported to us from either place and indeed from hardly anywhere other than Spain.
The most famous cinnabar mine (…) is that of Sisapo in Baetica. The security precautions are second to none. Smelting and refining of the ore are not allowed locally, but as much as 2,000 pounds of crude ore a year are sent to Rome under seal and there purified. To prevent the price going sky-high, it is fixed at 70 sesterces for about a pound. The mineral is adulterated in many ways – a source of illegal profit for the mining company. (…)
Those who polish cinnabar in workshops tie loose masks of bladder-skin over their faces to prevent inhalation of dust as they breathe; for the dust is a very serious health hazard. (…) Cinnabar is used for lettering in books and it makes more colourful lettering for inscriptions on walls, marble or even tombs.
[This is the colour of cinnabar, a colour which is also called vermilion. If I remember rightly, cinnabar is the pigment in the paint that covers the tori gates of Shinto Buddhist shrines, which is where you’re most likely to see it in the modern world. The Japanese call both pigment and colour 朱 or shu.]
