[170] I regret the necessity of troubling the learned reader with these stock quotations, but they are essential to the symmetry and uniformity of the subject.
[171] Sophocles and Ovid make Medea, and Virgil makes Elissa, use a sickle of chalcos. Homer, as will be seen, uses the same material for his arms, axes, and adzes. Pausanias follows him, quoting his description of Pisander’s axe and Meriones’ arrow; he also cites Achilles’ spear in the temple of Athene at Phaselis, with its point and ferrule of chalcos, and the similar sword of Memnon in the temple of Æsculapius at Nicomedia. Plutarch tells us that the sword and spear-head of Theseus, disinterred by Cymon in Scyros, were of copper. Empedocles, who (b.c. 444)—
ardentem frigidus Ætnam
Insiluit—
was betrayed by his sandal shoon with chalcos soles.
[172] See Macrob. Sat. vi. 3.
[173] Or ‘a furbisher (whetter, sharpener = acuens) of every cutting tool of copper and iron.’ See Chap. IX.
[174] I can hardly understand why Dr. Evans (p. 5) insists upon these sockets being bronze, as they could ‘hardly have been done from a metal so difficult to cast as unalloyed copper.’ He greatly undervalues the metallurgy of the Exodist Hebrews, who would have borrowed their science from Egypt.
[175] Lead is also mentioned, but not tin.
[176] A certain Herr Dromir patented in Germany a process for making malleable bronze. He added one per cent. of mercury to the tin, and then mixed it with the molten copper.