[177] For Irish copper swords see the Archéologie, vol. iii. p. 555. They will be exhaustively described in Part II.
[178] So Chalcis in Mela (ii. 7), now Egripos (Negroponte).
[179] The confusion with iron appears in the Sanskrit (Pali?) ayas; Latin æs for ahes (as we find in aheneus); the Persian áhan (آهن); the Gothic ais, or aiz; the High German er (which is the Assyrian eru and the Akkadian hurud), and the English iron. J. Grimm (Die Naturvölker) connects Ἄρης with æs. That æs and æris metalla in Pliny mean copper, we learn from his tale of Telephus (xxv. 19), which, by the by, is told by Camoens (Sonnet lxix.) in a very different way.
[180] χαλκεύειν δὲ καὶ τὸ σίδηρεύειν ἔλγον, καὶ χαλκέας τοὺς τὸν σίδηρον ἐργαζομένους. Jul. Pollux, Onomasticon, viii. c. 10.
[181] The full term was æs cyprium, which Pliny apparently applies to the finer kind; then it became cyprium, the adjective, which expressed only locality; and lastly cuprum. The third is first used by Spartianus in the biography of Caracalla (No. 5), Cancelli ex ære vel cupro (doors of æs or copper). Ælius Spartianus dates from the days of Diocletian and Constantine (Smith, sub voc.). When Pliny writes in Cypro prima fuit æris inventio, he leaves it doubtful if æs be copper or bronze; but we should prefer the former. So he makes the best ‘Missy’ (native yellow copperas) proceed from the Cyprus manufactories (xxxiii., iv. 25, and xxxiv., xii. 31). The word misí or missí is still used in India for a vitriolic powder to stain the teeth. Cypros, the wife of Agrippa, was possibly named from Kafar = the henna plant: the Cyprus of Pliny (xii. 51) is also the Lawsonia inermis.
[182] Frag. tom. i. p. 226. Edit. Bipont.
[183] The island will be further noticed in Chap. VIII.
[184] Cyprus, &c., by General Louis Palma (di Cesnola). London: Murray, 1877. The author excavated from 1866 to 1876, and opened some 15,000 tombs, mostly Phœnician.
[185] Quoted in the Kypros of W. H. Engel (vol. i. p. 14). The two volumes are a mine of information; much of it now antiquated, but useful to later students who have less leisure to accumulate learning.
[186] ‘In Cyprus, where the manufacturers of the stone called chalcitis (copper-smelters) burn it for many days in fire, a winged creature, something larger than a great fly, is seen walking and leaping in the fire.’ A brother of the salamander!