PART III.
THE TEUTONIC OR IRON PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.—THE INTRODUCTION OF IRON.

The changes consequent on the introduction of Iron, to a people already familiar with the smelting of tin and copper ores and the fabrication of weapons and implements of bronze, were not necessarily of a radical character, and undoubtedly were first experienced in the gradual acquirement of the new metal from foreign sources. Had bronze been obtainable in sufficient quantities to admit of its application to the numerous purposes for which iron has since been used, there was nothing to prevent the accomplishment of nearly all to which European civilisation has since attained, without the knowledge of the new metal. The opposite, however, was the case. The metal was costly and scarce, and hence one of the most obvious sources of the lengthened period over which we have seen reason to believe that the Archaic era extended. Throughout that whole period metal in every form was a rare and valued luxury, and it was as such that iron, the most widely diffused, the most abundant and most useful of all the metals, was first introduced into the British Isles. This is sufficiently accounted for from the fact, that iron rarely, if ever, occurs in nature in a metallic state; and that it requires great labour and a most intense heat to fuse it.

The age of iron was introduced by a transition-period, occupying possibly as long a time as that which marked the gradual introduction of the era of bronze; but it was not characterized by results of the same direct value. So long as the knowledge of the new metal merely extended to the substitution, by barter or other means, of iron for bronze weapons or implements, its influence could be little more noteworthy than may be the substitution of percussion-caps for flints in our British standing army, to some archæologist or historian of the year 1950. But even such traffic, no doubt, tended through time to make metals more abundant, and metallic weapons and implements more readily attainable, so that the artisan and fabricator were at length enabled to dispense entirely with the primeval stone-hammer and hatchet, and greatly to extend the application of the new and useful material.

It was only when iron had become thus plentiful that it could be productive of any effective change on the characteristics of the races by whom it was used. But though iron is the most abundant of all the metals, and was the latest to be introduced into use, it is at the same time the most perishable, rapidly oxidizing, unless preserved by the most favourable circumstances. Accordingly, very few iron relics, properly pertaining to the closing Pagan era, have been found in such a state of preservation as to enable us to make the use of them, in judging of the skill of their fabricators, which has already been done with those of the Bronze Period. The new and more useful metal, however, did not supersede the gold and bronze in their application to purposes of personal adornment; neither did it put a stop to the manufacture of pottery, to the use of bronze in the construction of vessels for sacred or domestic purposes, nor to those sepulchral rites by which so many evidences of primitive arts and manners have been chronicled for our instruction. It rather increased all these, superadding the additional material of silver, wherewith to multiply the personal ornaments which extending civilisation and refinement more largely demanded. The superior fitness of the new metal for the construction of weapons of war would, no doubt, be first discovered and turned to account. The absence of the guard on all the swords of the Bronze Period, to which attention has been directed, no doubt originated mainly in the mode of using the weapon, which its own capabilities rendered indispensable. The fence and clash of weapons consequent on modern swordsmanship, in which the sword is made to supply both offensive and defensive arms, was altogether incompatible with weapons of cast bronze, liable to shiver like glass at a violent blow. Experience would soon teach the old swordsman the true use of his weapon; and so long as he had only to contend with neighbouring tribes equally armed, he would deem his graceful leaf-shaped sword and his massy spear of bronze the perfect models of a warrior's arms. But while the changes which we have aimed at tracing out in the previous section were progressing slowly but effectively within our sea-girt isle, very remarkable occurrences were affecting the continent of Europe, and extending their influences towards its remotest limits. Carthage had risen from a Tyrian colony, planted on the site of an older Phœnician settlement on the African coast, to be one of the chief commercial and maritime states of the world. The younger builders on the banks of the Tiber had founded the capital destined twice to form the centre of universal empire. Rome and Carthage had come into collision, as was inevitable, according to the notions of these elder times, which held it impossible that two ambitious republics should exist as neighbours. The Punic wars followed, and for upwards of a century—till 147 B.C. when the African capital was razed to the ground—the seat of war was far removed from the British Isles. The second Punic war carried the arms of the rival republics into Spain, and then possibly some faint rumour of it may have reached the Cassiterides, stimulating for a time the trade of their ports, and checking it again, as disasters thickened around the devoted African kingdom. Spain still continued the seat of war after the total annihilation of the Carthaginian power; and during the intestine struggles which followed in the Jugurthan war, there appeared for the first time on the northern frontiers of Italy, hosts of the Teutones, Cimbri, and other northern barbarians. By these several Roman armies were defeated, and the growing power threatened with annihilation from this unexpected source, at the very time when it seemed to be without a rival. From an incidental notice of Polybius we learn the important fact that these northern tribes were already familiar with iron, and possessed of weapons of that metal, though apparently ignorant of the art of converting it into steel. One of the earliest European sources of iron, of which we know anything definite, was the country of the Norici, a tribe occupying a considerable region to the south of the Danube, the exact boundaries of which are only imperfectly known. The invention of the art of converting iron into steel is ascribed to this Celtic race. Noricum was conquered by Augustus, and, in his time, the Noric swords were as celebrated at Rome as the Damascus blades or Andrea Ferraras in more recent times. To this source, therefore, we should probably look for the earliest supplies of iron weapons. Polybius also refers to the country of the Norici as abounding in gold; so that they appear to have excelled in all the metallurgic arts, and may be supposed to have supplied the arms with which the Teutones and the Cimbri invaded the Roman frontiers. The latter, indeed, advanced through Noricum, and bore perhaps from thence the sword which the haughty Gaul flung into the balance of the Capitol when Quintus Sulpicius purchased the safety of Rome, not with iron but gold.

The argument deduced from the apparently independent origin of the oldest European names of the metals, confirms the evidence derived from other sources in proof of the ignorance of the Arian nomades of the working of metals on their first settlement in Europe. The same line of argument, however, adds strong confirmation to the conclusion suggested here, that the Celtæ had obtained considerable mastery of the metallurgic arts at the time when they were brought into direct intercourse and collision with the growing power of Rome, and renders it probable that the Romans derived both the names of some at least of the metals, and their knowledge of their economic uses from this older race. The Saxon gold differs not more essentially from the Greek χρυσος, than that from the Latin aurum; or iron, from σιδηρος, or ferrum; but when we come to examine the Celtic names of the metals it is otherwise. The Celtic terms are:—Gold—Gael. or; golden, orail; Welsh, aur; Lat. aurum. Silver—Gael. airgiod; made of silver, airgiodach; Welsh, ariant; Lat. argentum, derived in the Celtic from arg, white or milk, like the Greek αργος, whence they also formed their αργυρος. Nor is it improbable that the Latin ferrum and the English iron spring indirectly from the same Celtic root:—Gael. iarunn; Welsh, haiarn; Sax. iren; Dan. iern; Span. hierro, which last furnishes no remote approximation to ferrum. Nor with the older metals is it greatly different: as bronze—Gael. umha or prais; Welsh, pres, whence our English brass—a name bearing no very indistinct resemblance to the Roman æs. Lead in like manner has its peculiar Gaelic name, luaidhe, like the Saxon læd, while the Welsh, plwm, closely approximates to the Latin, plumbum. It may undoubtedly be argued that the Latin is the root instead of the offshoot of these Celtic names, but the entire archæological proofs are opposed to this idea; and the direct historic evidence of the early Noric arts, and of the arms of the barbarian invaders of Italy who dictated terms to Quintus Sulpicius in the Roman Capitol, prove that the Celtic and Teutonic races of the north of Europe preceded the Romans in their mastery of the art of working in metals. To this period, (circa B.C. 113-100,) or probably a little earlier, while Rome was preoccupied with the struggle for existence, we may refer the close of the isolated state of the British Isles, and the irruption of newer races among the original occupants of the country. This it is, and not the mere alteration of the old metallurgist's materials, which gives a totally new character to the Iron Period. The gold and the bronze are still there, but the shapes which express to us the intellectual progress of their artificers and owners are essentially changed. The indefiniteness of archaic art gives place to forms and ornaments as positive and characteristic as any in which we recognise the expressive types of medieval art, or the changing fashions of the Elizabethan and Louis Quatorze styles. It is important that we should fix as nearly as possible the true date of this change, when for the first time we find our inquiries bringing us in contact with ascertained epochs and recorded facts. From this, as from a central point, we may perhaps yet be able to reckon backward as well as forward, and at least secure a basis for future observations.

When iron first became known to the native Britons its value was naturally estimated in accordance with its rarity, and it was applied to such uses as we now devote the precious metals. Converted into personal ornaments, it formed rare, if not beautiful trinkets, and in the shape of ring-money it even superseded or supplemented the older gold. Julius Cæsar speaks of the Britons as using such a rude currency; but we may infer from other evidence already referred to that this did not arise, at that comparatively late period, from its extreme rarity. Herodian indeed speaks still later of the Britons wearing "iron about their bellies and necks, which they esteem as fine and rich an ornament as others do gold." But we have abundant evidence that they were familiar with the value and beauty of gold, and we shall not, I think, overstrain the allowances to be made for the prejudiced accounts of the most intelligent Roman, in receiving even the narrative of Cæsar with some limitations. His personal opportunities of observation could extend only to a very limited section of the native Britons, and these seen under the most disadvantageous circumstances; while the polished and haughty Roman was little likely to trouble himself with attempting any very impartial estimate of what were in his eyes only different phases of barbarism.