ophites

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A stone mentioned by various Greek and Latin authors, the word designating Several quite different things. It is impossible to identify with certainty any one of the various substances, some of which were unquestionably fabulous, to which the name ophites was given by Orpheus, Dioscorides, Pliny, and other classic writers. Pliny distinguishes two kinds of ophite, the hard and the soft. The former may have been some variety of granite; the latter, a variety of serpentine, perhaps the Tuscan gabbro or ophiolite. From a very early time, various rounded stones or petrifactions, more or less egg-shaped in form, and called by various names, ovum anguinum, ophites, serpent-stone, adderhead, Druidical bead, etc., have been held in high veneration, and endowed with extraordinary virtues. The ovum anguinum described by Pliny would appear from his description to have been a fossil echinoderm. Glass spindle-whorls, which are known to have been in use within the past four hundred years, have been sold at a recent day as the true ovum anguinum; and fossil echinoderms have also been within a few years treasured as Druidical relics and regarded as possibly possessing a portion, at least, of the virtues attributed by the ancients to the ophites.

Wiktionary

1. n. Plural form of ophite.