.......This 'Ostanes', so Pliny states, was a Persian magus who had accompanied Xerxes in his invasion of Greece, and who had then introduced magicis,[n 2] the "most fraudulent of the arts", to that country. But the figure of Ostanes was such that Pliny felt "it necessary to supplement his history with doppelgangers"; so, not only does Ostanes appear as a contemporary of the early 5th century BCE Xerxes, but he is also contemporary with—and companion of—the late 4th century BCE Alexander.[10] Pliny goes on to note that Ostanes's introduction of the "monstrous craft" to the Greeks gave those people not only a "lust" (aviditatem) for magic, but a downright "madness" (rabiem) for it, and many of their philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato traveled abroad to study it, and then returned to teach it.(xxx.2.8-10).

Pliny also transmits Ostanes's definition of magic: "As Ostanes said, there are several different kinds of it; he professes to divine (divina promittit) from water, globes, air, stars, lamps, basins and axes, and by many other methods, and besides to converse with ghosts and those in the underworld" (xxx.2.8-10).[13] By the end of the 1st century CE, "Ostanes" is cited as an authority on alchemy, necromancy, divination, and on the mystical properties of plants and stones.[11] Both his legend and literary output attributed to him increased with time, and by the 4th century "he had become one of the great authorities in alchemy" and "much medieval alchemical material circulated under his name."[11]

This "authority" continued in Arabic and Persian alchemical literature, such as an Arabic treatise titled Kitab al-Fusul al-ithnay ‘ashar fi 'ilm al-hajar al-mukarram (The Book of the Twelve Chapters on the Honourable Stone).