Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami
Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta,
Sed prior æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus.
Quo facilis magis est natura et copia major
Ære solum terræ tractabunt, æreque belli
Miscebant fluctus.”—De Rerum Natura, lib. 5.
But here I cannot help thinking the tradition has reference rather to the use than to the knowledge of metals. We have seen, for instance, that the cultivation of the ground commenced with Noah—the fact being attested both by Scripture and tradition. Now, in the above passage, although the primitive weapons are referred to, as of stones, yet it is said “æreque solum terræ tractabunt,” an averment which no doubt has reference to the brazen age; yet nothing forbids the construction, which on other grounds seems the more natural that the land was from the first so cultivated,[281] and that in strictness the commencement of the brazen age was identical with the commencement of cultivation, although in the mind of the poet it had reference to the introduction of bronze weapons and implements of war. Moreover, the sylvarum fragmina rami may point to the period immediately preceding cultivation, when the human race clung to the mountains. The testimony of Scripture to the point seems plain. Not only does the construction of the ark appear to imply the use of metals, but the reference to Tubalcain, “who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron” (Gen. iv. 22), seems to put the antediluvian knowledge of metals beyond question.
In the first commencement after the Deluge, unless miraculously supplied, there would have been no grain or bread food until time had been allowed for its production. During this interval acorns, &c., may have been the only food. Perhaps it was so ordained to incite to the new permission to eat flesh meat. On the other hand, I ask, in those ages when men were supposed to live exclusively on acorns, was not flesh meat eaten,—were there no hunters? Had man no control over the domestic animals?
That in a peaceful period, and the intercommunication of families previous to the dispersion implies a state of peace ([ch. xiii.]), in a period in which, if we follow the other traditions, “all families were good,” and were under the rule of an old man, “who held his hands to his ears when they spoke to him of war,” it is not surprising to learn either that they had no weapons, or that they were of the simplest description. It is characteristic of an age which piques itself upon the perfection of its artillery, and whose greatest triumphs and inventions have been in the science of destruction, to look back upon a totally different age which happened only to have stone weapons, as necessarily an age of barbarism. But from our point of view it must be regarded not as an age of barbarism, but of prosperity,—not as a state of equality, but of the subordination of the members of the family to each chief, and of families relatively to each other; an age of much mental vigour and spiritual intuition, and, so far from being a period of misery, it left reminiscences of happiness such as lingered long in the memory of mankind.