[360] I shall reserve for chap. xi. notices of iron by the classic and sacred poets of Greece.
[361] Troy and its Remains, p. 362; the analysis by M. Damour of Lyons.
[362] The theory of Stephani, Schulze, and others concerning the Byzantine date and Herulian origin of the Mycenæan graves, has been treated in England with some respect by Mr. A. S. Murray and Mr. Perry.
[363] According to Pausanias, Alyattes, the Lydian king (ob. b.c. 570), dedicated to his god, amongst other offerings, an inlaid iron saucer.
[364] Neither from this nor from any other passage can we ascertain whether the Chalybes tribe gave its name to chalybs (steel), or whether the material worked named the workmen.
[365] Colonel Yule (M. Polo, ii. 96) remarks that in the Middle Ages steel was regarded as a distinct natural species made of another ore, and relates how a native to whom an English officer had explained the process of tempering replied, ‘What, would you have me believe that if I put an ass into the furnace it will come out a horse?’
[366] Acies is properly the edge, that is, the steeled or cutting part of an instrument, which may be case-hardened. Hence the later words aciare, to steel, and aciarium, sharpening steel; hence, too, the neo-Latin acier, acciaio, &c.
[367] See chap. xiii. Dr. Evans (Bronze, 275) says, ‘How far their process of burying iron until part of it had rusted away would, in the case of charcoal iron, leave the remaining portion more of the nature of steel, I am unable to say.’ It will appear that this burying is often spoken of; I have never seen it practised.
[368] Regulus (the ‘little king’) is the residue of pure metal purged of its dross; the old alchemists so entitled it because they ever expected to find the great king—Gold.
[369] At the Anthropological Congress of Austrian Salzburg (Aug. 1881) the tools attributed to the ‘Keltic’ miners were almost the same as those which I had seen near the Wrekin.