In the manufacture of corslets and cuirasses[[939]] much industry and ability was exhibited. The former were generally composed of linen or hempen twine curiously wrought, and doubled or trebled according to the desire of the purchaser,[[940]] and worn chiefly in the chase;[[941]] others consisted of thick leathern jerkins, covered with metallic scales,[[942]] single, double, or treble, and fastened to each other by a series of hooks. In lieu of these plates was sometimes substituted a coating of intertwisted rings, resembling in some respects the chain armour of a later age. Wooden cuirasses were also sometimes worn.[[943]] The Sarmatians[[944]] possessing no iron, headed their darts and javelins with bone, and employed very extraordinary materials in the manufacture of their cuirasses. Collecting carefully all the hoofs of such horses as died, they cut them into laminæ, resembling in form the scales of a fish. These they sewed together with the nerves of horses or oxen, and thus produced a species of breastplate which for elegance and utility was scarcely inferior to those of the Greeks. In the manufacture of linen corslets[[945]] the Egyptians displayed peculiar excellence, at least the description of one of them which history has preserved is calculated to create a very high idea of their ingenuity. It was curiously wrought, we are told, with fine bobbins, each composed of three hundred and sixty threads, distinctly visible, adorned with numerous figures of animals interwoven with cotton and gold.[[946]] Among the Greeks this piece of armour was often richly embroidered by the ladies of the warrior’s family, whom, on more than one occasion, we find busy at this task on the eve of battle. The cuirasses of brass or steel were finely polished and buttoned under the arm. Even the horses were furnished with breastplates and frontlets,[[947]] and occasionally their flanks also were protected by armour. The warrior’s greaves[[948]] were manufactured of copper, brass, tin, or other metal, and fastened about the legs with silver buttons. Archers seem commonly to have worn a species of gloves or fingerlings.[[949]]
The manufacture of shields[[950]] underwent great fluctuations at different periods of Grecian history, and even in the same age there existed numerous and extraordinary differences in their materials, form, and structure. In early times they consisted simply of a piece of circular basket-work, plaited for the sake of lightness with vine-branches[[951]] or willows; or were made of a solid piece of wood scooped into the proper form, and covered with one or more coats of leather. The wood usually preferred for this use was that of the elder, the beach, the poplar, and the fig; and the leather was generally tough bull-hide,[[952]] with or without the hair, though we read of nations, as the Ethiopians, who made use for this purpose of the skins of cranes.[[953]] The same people at the present day have discovered that the hide of the crocodile, dressed with the scales on, forms a better integument for their bucklers. Among the Homeric heroes the wooden framework was protected by many folds of leather, amounting sometimes to seven, to which were added plates of brass, silver, gold, or tin. Even when the face of the shield was composed of some inferior metal, the rim seems frequently to have been of gold.
In later times shields were usually manufactured of brass or steel, wrought and fashioned with the greatest care, and polished like a mirror. Occasionally, likewise, they were inlaid with purple, ivory, and gold,[[954]] or painted white, or crusted with gold and silver, as among the Samnites.[[955]] From the remotest antiquity, moreover, it was customary to paint upon shields a number of devices, each warrior selecting one for himself,[[956]] which, like the armorial bearings of the knights of chivalry, distinguished him from his comrades in battle. Thus Perseus chose the head of the Gorgon Medusa;[[957]] Tydeus the aspect of the face of the mighty heavens, including the full moon, surrounded by flaming stars;[[958]] Eteocles bore before him the figure of a warrior scaling a lofty tower, while Hippomedon selected, as the emblem of his character, the figure of Typhœos breathing forth fire and smoke. Every reader will remember the varied imagery that crowded the shield of the Homeric Achilles, together with the scenes which Hesiod, in imitation, depicts on the buckler of Heracles. In the historical period[[959]] the people of Sicyon had a sigma, the initial letter in the name of their capital, painted on their shields.[[960]] These ornaments, as well as the handles, it is said, owed their origin to the invention of the Carians. The form of the shield exhibited much variety. One kind, for example, was small and circular,[[961]] another oblong or parallelogrammatic, and of dimensions so large as to cover the whole body, and allow the fallen warrior to be borne home on it as upon a bier; others were rhomboidal,[[962]] or semilunar, or shaped like an ivy-leaf. But whatever may have been their figure, there always projected from the centre of the external face a large boss, with a smaller one, generally pointed, on the middle of it. This the soldiers dashed in the countenances of the enemy. Within, two bars, stretching from rim to rim, and crossing each other like the letter X, gave the warrior, who passed his left arm behind them, greater power over his defence, while a smaller handle, on the fore part of the shield, received his grasp.[[963]] Occasionally, the place of these bars was supplied by metallic or wooden handles, exactly of a size to receive the arm; and, by means of a leathern strap, the buckler, when marching, was usually suspended on the shoulder.[[964]] In time of peace both the shield and the helmet were laid up, each in its appropriate case.[[965]] Besides the manufacturers of arms, who supplied states with large orders, there were numerous armourers on a smaller scale,[[966]] whose shops exhibited a rich and varied assortment of shields, helmets, and every kind of weapon.
The metals employed in the fabrication of arms were obtained partly from mines found in Greece itself, partly by commerce from the surrounding countries.[[967]] On the methods of mining which prevailed among the Greeks our information is peculiarly scanty. We know, however, that, at Laurion,[[968]] the Athenians made use of both shafts and adits, and that in chambering they employed much timber.[[969]] To prevent the falling in of the superincumbent mountain there were left at intervals vast pillars,[[970]] the cutting away of which was by law prohibited on pain of death. In the potter’s-clay mines of Samos, where the veins, running generally between beds of rock, were exceedingly shallow, seldom exceeding two feet in depth, the miners, as in the thin veins of our own coal mines, were compelled while at work to lie on their back or sides, which, it may be presumed, was the practice in other mines under similar circumstances. Whether they possessed any means of protecting themselves against the fire-damps or malaria,[[971]] which, we know, prevailed greatly at Laurion,[[972]] is a matter of much uncertainty. In Spain, the mines ran deep into the earth, and were of prodigious extent, having transverse passages and caverns of great dimensions and elevation.
In an old shaft discovered in the mountains of Santo Spirito,[[973]] the sides were supported by masonry; large pools of water were found in some of the chambers, while the explorers could hear afar off the incessant roar of waterfalls. Here and there the passages were nearly blocked up by masses of gold and silver ore.[[974]]
How the water was drained off, or the ore brought to the surface of the earth, no ancient author has explained. When extracted, however, it was pounded in a stone mortar with an iron pestle, then passed through a sieve, and transferred to the smelting furnace.[[975]]
The account transmitted to us of the gold mines of Egypt may probably throw some light on the practice which prevailed among the Greeks. In them we find an almost exact type of the degrading toil and disregard of danger and decency recently brought to light among our own subterranean population. There, indeed, the workmen were forced to their task by the direct compulsion of a tyrannical government; while in Great Britain the constraint is enveloped by a cloud of circumstances which conceal, though they scarcely soften, the stern laws of necessity.
The Egyptian gold mines were situated in the great eastern desert, on the shores of the Red Sea. They had been worked from the remotest antiquity; in proof of which it is related, that copper pickaxes were frequently found in the deserted shafts and galleries, beside incredible heaps of human bones, relics of the multitudes who had perished there by malaria, or fire-damps, or the falling of rocks, or more probably from the incessant oppression to which they were subjected.[[976]] In fact the benevolent historian,[[977]] to whom we are indebted for nearly all we know on this curious subject, felt so strongly for the sufferings of these wretched artificers of Egyptian grandeur, that he pronounced death in their case to be more desirable than life.[[978]] But the most miserable possess resources and springs of gratification unknown to philosophers and the professors of literature; and, we may be sure, that even those outcasts who brought up gold from the bowels of the earth to adorn the thrones and palaces of the Pharaohs, knew how to extract from their bitter employment some few sweets of sufficient efficacy to render life endurable.
No doubt the processes of those early times were sufficiently rude. When about to open a new shaft or adit the Inspectors of the mines appear carefully to have examined the different faces of the mountain, sombre, scarped, and barren to the last degree; and having fixed upon a spot in the face of some cliff, the first operation was to render the rock friable by the application of powerful fires, which were kindled with wood at its base. The more robust of the workmen then proceeded with their pickaxes to the excavation of the galleries, which seldom or never proceeded in a right line; but following the direction of the metallic veins, mounted, descended, branched off obliquely to the left or to the right; and progressing in this manner, sometimes perforated the whole bulk of the mountain, and striking downwards, like the roots of trees, extended even to the sea.[[979]] The men employed in getting the ore, followed incessantly by task-masters with instruments of chastisement in their hands, were seldom permitted to proportion their exertions to their strength; but often toiled on apparently till they dropped, when their bones joined the heaps of those who had fallen before them. While thus engaged, more especially when united in great numbers they had clambered the rocks to a considerable height, they presented an extraordinary spectacle; for each miner[[980]] carried a lamp bound to his forehead, though how, when they bent or kneeled, or worked sideways, it escaped being extinguished seems difficult of explanation.
The laborious operation of collecting and hurrying the ore was performed by boys of tender age, who deposited it beyond the mouth of the shaft. Another class of workmen, consisting chiefly of the aged and the infirm, now bore the metalliferous stones to that part of the works where the founders were stationed. These were powerful and robust men in the flower of their age, who, with large stone mortars and iron pestles, reduced, under the eye of rigid Inspectors, the ore to small fragments not exceeding a vetch in size.[[981]] This done, it was transferred to the mills which were turned by women, the wives and daughters of the miners, who, with the exception of a slender covering about the waist, were entirely naked, misery in all times and places rendering people contemptuous of appearances and indifferent to morality.[[982]] These mills, heavy no doubt and difficult to work, were turned by six women, three on either side. They would appear, however, to have answered well the purpose for which they were designed, since the ore, we are told, was reduced by them to the fineness of flour; after which it was handed over to the Selangeus, the last link in that long chain of operators which connected the mine with the smelting furnace. The business of the Selangeus consisted in separating the metal from the matrix in which it had been produced. For this purpose, the auriferous dust was cast in a heap upon a broad polished board slightly inclined,[[983]] and there washed and triturated until the greater part of the terrene particles had been, by soft sponges and water, separated from the gold, which was next put into earthen vessels with small quantities of lead, tin, salt, and barley-bran, and placed in the smelting furnace, where it was subjected, for five days and nights, to the flames. This done, the virgin gold came forth glittering and pure as if it had not been wrung from human agony or sullied by human tears.