[320] Pliny, xxxiv. 39.
[321] The word comes from the root which gave the Persian áhan; the Irish iaran or yarann; the Welsh hiarn; the Armorican uarn; the Gothic eisarn; the Danish iern; the Swedish iarn; the Cimbric jara; the German Eisen, and the Latin ferrum, with the neo-Latin ferro, hierro (Span.), &c. From iaran also we derive Harnisch, harness.
[322] The unfortunate Cretans gained the name of ‘ever liars’ (ἀεὶ ψεῦσται) for telling what was probably the truth. They showed in their island the grave of Jupiter, who must have been originally some hero or chief deified after his death—evidently one of the origins of worship. The evil report began with Callimachus (Hymn. in Jov. 8); and was continued in the proverbial τρία κάππα κάκιστα (Krete, Kappadocia, and Kilikia). Hence the syllogistic puzzle of Eubulides: ‘Epimenides said that the Cretans are liars: Epimenides is a Cretan: ergo, Epimenides is a liar: ergo, the Cretans are not liars: ergo, Epimenides is not a liar.’
[323] Chap. iv. The Chalybs of Justin (xliv. 3) is a river between the Ana (Guadiana) and the Tagus; called by Ptolemy and Martianus, Κάλιπους or Κάλιπος. Æschylus alludes to the original Chalybes when he personifies the Sword as the ‘Chalybian stranger,’ and in the same tragedy (Seven against Thebes) he entitles it ‘the hammer-wrought Scythian steel.’
[324] ‘To the abundance of iron we may attribute the fact that the Africans appear to have passed direct from the stone implements, that are now found in the soil, to those of iron, without passing through the intermediate bronze period which, in Egypt and other countries, intervened between the ages of stone and iron.’—Anthropol. Coll. pp. 128–134.
[325] ‘The High Antiquity of Iron and Steel,’ a valuable paper read before the Philos. Soc. Glasgow, printed in Iron (1875–76), and kindly sent to me by the editor, Mr. Nursey; also The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel (Trübner, London, 1877), from which Mr. Day has allowed me to make extracts.
[326] The question is to be determined by facts, not theories. Hitherto we are justified in believing, from the skeletons dug up at great depths, or found in caves associated with the mammals which they destroyed, that Man in prehistoric times was of a low physical, and therefore mental type. We shall believe the opposite view when we are shown ancient crania equal, if not superior, to those of the present day—relics that will revive the faded glories of ‘Father Adam’ and ‘Mother Eve.’ But, meanwhile, we cannot be expected to believe in ipse dixits, inspired or uninspired.
[327] For instance, in North-Western Europe, the early iron age began about a.d. 250, according to Konrad Englehardt (Denmark in the early Iron Age, p. 4, London, 1866), quoted by Mr. Day.
[328] Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. v.; London, Longmans, 1867, with additions by Samuel Birch, LL.D.
[329] When Laplace made meteorolites ejections from lunar volcanoes, Chladni suggested that they were masses of metallic matter, moving in irregular orbits through interplanetary, and possibly interstellar, space.