Beckmann tells us, in his valuable ‘History of Inventions,’[286] ‘in the course of time an ore which must have been calamine (carbonate of zinc) or blende[287] (sulphuret of zinc), was added to copper, and gave it a yellow colour. The addition made it harder, more fusible and sonorous, easily subject to the lathe, more economical to work, and a worse conductor of heat than the pure metal.’ We have few specimens of old art-works in ‘brass’ proper, although zinc was discovered by analysis in an ancient Sword, chiefly copper.[288] Gibel assures us that zinc occurs only in Roman alloys, the bronze of the Greeks containing nothing beyond copper, tin, and lead. The Romans also could varnish or lacquer brass, but it is not known whence they derived the art. Percy notes (p. 521) that brass was produced ‘early in the Christian era, if not before its commencement.’ He quotes in proof a large coin of the Cassia Gens (b.c. 20) which contained copper 82·26 and zinc 17·31; a Vespasian (Rome, a.d. 71), an imperial Trajan (Caria, circ. a.d. 110), a Geta (Carian Mylasa, a.d. 189–212), a Greek Caracalla (a.d. 199), and many others. In modern times zinciferous ore was imported by the Portuguese from the East a century before it was common throughout Europe.[289] In the early seventeenth century the Dutch captured one of their craft laden with spelter, and the secret became known. Bishop Richard Watson says (1783) the cargo was calaem, which he connects with ‘calamine’: the latter, like the German Galmei, derives from cadmia.
Amongst the moderns æs gave rise to airain. The French leton, laton, latton, or laiton (cuivre jaune); the Italian lattone, lottone, and lastly ottone, and the Spanish lata and laton, German Latun, and English latten (thin sheet brass), the latoun of Chaucer (‘Pardoner’s Prologue,’ 64), are either from luteum, yellow (metal), or from the plant luteum (Reseda luteola), used to stain chrysocolla.[290] Our brass is probably the Scandinavian bras, cement; and the German Mosch, Meish, and Messing, from mischen = miscere.[291]
ORICHALCUM.
It may be advisable to notice the ὀρειχάλκον[292] of the Homerids and Hesiod, which Strabo also calls ψευδάργυρος (false silver), and aurichalcum, and which the perverse ingenuity of commentaries has made so mysterious.[293] In the poetic phase, which loves the vague, this ‘mountain-copper’ was a mythic natural metal, ranking between gold and silver, and chimerical as was the chalcolibanon[294] of the Apocalypse (i. 15, ii. 18). The name does not occur in Pindar or the Dramatists. Plato (the ‘Critias,’ § ix., treating of Atlantis,[295] America) makes oreichalc, ‘now known only by name,’ the most precious metal after gold. Pliny (xxxiv. 2) tells us truly enough that aurichalcum no longer exists.
The next application of the word was to ruby copper (?), a suboxide whose beautiful crystals are formed in the natural state. Pollux and Hesychius the grammarian (d.d. 380) define it as copper (χαλκός) resembling gold; and Cicero puts the question whether, if a person should offer a piece of gold for sale, thinking he was disposing of only a piece of orichalcum, an honest man ought to inform him that it was really gold, or might fairly buy for a penny what is worth a thousand times as much.[296] Buffon compares it with tombac, or Chinese copper containing gold.[297] Beckmann (s. v. ‘Tin’) notes aurichalcum or Corinthian brass in Plautus, ‘Auro contra carum.’ Festus speaks of ‘orichalcum (copper), stannum (zinc or pewter?), cassiterum (tin), and aurichalcum (brass).’ The same signification occurs in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (fourth century); in Primasius, Bishop of African Adrumetum (sixth century), and in Isidore, Bishop of Seville (seventh century). Albertus Magnus (thirteenth century), the Dominican monk, in treating ‘De Natura et Commixtione Æris,’ describes how cuprum became aurichalcum.
Strabo is mysterious. In one place he tells us that the Cyprian copper alone produces the Cadmian stone, copperas-water, and oxide of copper. In another (lib. xiii.) he says, ‘There is a stone near Andeira which, being burnt, becomes iron. It is then put into a furnace, together with some kind of earth,[298] when it (the stone? the earth? or both?) drops or distils a ψευδάργυρος (mock silver, zinc?), which, with the addition of copper, produces what is called the mixture, and which some term oreichalcum.’ Pseudargyros, also found in the neighbourhood of Tmolus, would here seem to mean zinc or Cadmia fossilis (natural calamine or carbonate of zinc). Pliny (xxxiv. 22) confuses with cadmia, furnace calamine, and a particular ore of copper opposed to calchitis. When Dioscorides (v. cap. 84) seems to allude to artificial or furnace-calamine, an impure oxide of zinc, he may mean the more modern tutiya (Avicenna), toutia, thouthia,[299] cadmie des fourneaux, or tutty. Reduced to powder, and mixed with an equal quantity of wetted charcoal by way of fondant or flux, it is melted with copper to form brass. The Avocat de Launey (1780) and Bishop Watson both agree that Strabo’s orichalcum is brass.
Lastly, aurichalcum was made synonymous with electrum, natural or artificial. The word Ἤλεκτρος[300] is popularly derived from Helios, as rivalling the sun in sheen. According to Lepsius it is the ‘usem’-metal of Thut-mes III.; Brugsch (i. 345) understands by ‘usem’ brass, and thinks Asmara or Asmala equivalent to the Hebrew hasmal or hashmal = electrum. In Bunsen (v. 757) Kasabet and Kakhi are brass (aurichalcum), and Khesbet is a metal connected with Kassiteros = tin. The alloy was known to Hesiod (‘Scut.’ 142) and to the ‘Odyssey’[301] (iv. 73), not to the ‘Iliad.’ Sophocles (‘Antig.’ 1037) applied ‘Sardian electrum’ to gold, not to silver. Herodotus (iii. 115), in the historic age (b.c. 480–30), gives the name of the mythical metal to the ‘tears of the Heliades,’ which the Latins called succinum (succum), the Low-Latins ambrum, the Arabs anbar, and we Amber. Pliny (xxxiii. 23), repeated by Pausanias (v. 12, § 6), notes two kinds, natural (‘in all gold ore there is some silver’[302]) and artificial; in the latter the proportion of silver must not exceed one-fifth. The staters of Lydian Crœsus, held by the Greeks to be the most ancient of coins, were, according to Böckh, of electrum, three parts gold and one part silver. Lucian applies the term to glass (ὕαλος); and, lastly, it was taken for brass and confounded with aurichalcum.[303]
I would suggest that this aurichalcum might also be the ‘Dowris bronze’ of Ireland, so called because first observed at Dowris, near Parsonstown, King’s County. Wilde (p. 360) supposes with others that the gold-coloured alloy depended upon the admixture of a certain proportion of lead, and compares it with the Cyprus copper termed by the Romans Coronarium (used for theatrical crowns), which was coated with ox-gall.[304] Of this or molu there are many articles in the Dublin Museum, preserving their fine golden-yellow lustre: they had probably been lacquered or varnished like modern brasses; and the patina might be some gum-resin. When much tarnished, they were cleaned by holding over the fire, and then by dipping in a weak solution of acid, as is done with modern castings. Two specimens, a Sword and a dagger-blade, were analysed (pp. 470, 483), and proved to contain copper 87·67 to 90·72, tin 8·52 to 8·25, lead 3·87 to 0·87, with a trace of sulphur in the Sword.[305] The specific gravities were 8·819 to 8·675. In a spear-head (p. 512), besides copper, tin, and lead, iron 0·31 and cobalt 0·09 were found.
There were other alloys of which we read but know little; such were the æs ægineticum, demonnesium, and nigrum; the æs deliacum, whose secret was lost in Plutarch’s day, and the Ταρτήσσιος χαλκὸς[306] from Southern Spain, probably shipped at Gibraltar Bay. Ollaria or pot-copper (brass) contained three pounds of plumbum argentarium (equal parts of tin and lead) to one hundred pounds of copper. Æs caldarium could only be fused. Finally, græcanicum (Greek-colour) was mould or second-hand copper (formalis seu collectaneus) with ten per cent. of plumbum nigrum (lead) and five per cent. of silver lead (argentiferous galena?).
THE CELT AND THE SWORD.