Magnes the shepherd

Magnes the shepherd, sometimes described as Magnes the shepherd boy, is a mythological figure, possibly based on a real person, who was cited by Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 79 CE) as discovering natural magnetism. His name, "Magnes", the Latin word for magnetite, has been attributed as the origin of the Latin root that has passed into English, giving its speakers the words magnet, magnetism, the mentioned ore, and related formulations. Other authorities have attributed the word origin to other sources.

As set out in Pliny's Naturalis Historia ("Natural History"), an early encyclopedia published c. 77 CE – c. 79 CE, and as translated from the Latin in Robert Jacobus Forbes' Studies in Ancient Technology, Pliny wrote the following (attributing the source of his information, in turn, to Nicander of Colophon):

Nicander is our authority that it [magnetite ore] was called Magnes from the man who first discovered it on Mount Ida and he is said to have found it when the nails of his shoes and the ferrule of his staff adhered to it, as he was pasturing his herds.

The passage appears at Book XXXVI of Naturalis Historia, covering "The Natural History of Stones", at chapter 25 entitled "The Magnet: Three Remedies". Although Pliny's description is often cited, the story of Magnes the shepherd is postulated by physicist Gillian Turner to be much older, dating from approximately 900 BCE. Any writings Nicander may have made on the subject have since been lost.

Written in approximately 600 CE, book XVI of Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville tells the same story as Pliny, but places Magnes in India. This is repeated in Vincent of Beauvais' Miroir du Monde (c. 1250 CE) and in Thomas Nicols' 1652 work, Lapidary, or, the History of Pretious Stones, wherein he describes Magnes as a "shepherd of India, who was wont to keep his flocks about those mountains in India, where there was an abundance of lodestones".

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