For a long time past it has been the fashion to plate the couches of our women, as well as some of our banqueting-couches, entirely with silver. Two centuries ago these couches were invented, as well as chargers of silver, one hundred pounds in weight: it is a well-known fact, that there were then upwards of one hundred and fifty of these in Rome, and that many persons were proscribed through the devices of others who were desirous to gain possession thereof. Well may our Annals be put to the blush for having to impute those civil wars to the existence of such vices as these!

Our own age, however, has waxed even stronger in this respect. In the reign of Claudius, his slave Drusillanus, surnamed Rotundus, who acted as his steward in Nearer Spain, possessed a silver charger weighing five hundred pounds, for the manufacture of which a workshop had to be expressly built. This charger was accompanied also by eight other dishes, each two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. How many of his fellow-slaves, pray, would it have taken to introduce these dishes, or who were to be the guests served therefrom? Compare this extravagance with the simplicity of the times of Fabricius, who would allow no general of an army to have any other plate of silver than a patera and a salt-cellar.—Oh that he could see how that the rewards of valor in our day are either composed of these objects of luxury, or are broken up to make them! Alas for the morals of our age! Fabricius puts us to the blush.

It is a remarkable fact that the art of chasing gold should have conferred no celebrity upon any person, while that of embossing silver has rendered many illustrious. The greatest renown, however, has been acquired by Mentor. Aside from single pieces only four pairs of vases were ever made by him, and at the present day not one of these, it is said, is any longer in existence, owing to the conflagrations of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus and of that in the Capitol. Varro informs us in his writings that he also was in possession of a bronze statue, the work of this artist. Zopyrus represented the court of the Areopagus and the trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother Clytæmnestra upon two cups valued at twelve thousand sesterces. There was Pytheas also, a work of whose sold at the rate of ten thousand denarii for two ounces: it was a drinking-bowl, the figures on which represented Ulysses and Diomedes stealing the Palladium from Troy. The same artist engraved also, upon some small drinking-vessels, kitchen scenes of such remarkably fine workmanship and so liable to injury, that it was quite impossible to take copies of them by moulding. Teucer, too, the inlayer, enjoyed a great reputation.

All at once, however, this art became so lost in point of excellence, that at the present day ancient specimens are the only ones at all valued; and only those pieces of plate are held in esteem the designs on which are so much worn that the figures cannot be distinguished.

CHAPTER VIII.
BRONZE.[208]

We must, in the next place, give an account of the ores of bronze, an alloy which, in respect of utility, is next in value; indeed the Corinthian bronze comes before silver, not to say almost before gold itself. It is also the standard of monetary value; I have already mentioned that for a great length of time the Roman people employed no coin except bronze, and there is another ancient fact which proves that the esteem in which it was held was of equal antiquity with that of the City itself, the circumstance that the third associated body which Numa established, was that of the braziers.[209]

The most highly esteemed copper is procured beyond the seas; it was formerly obtained in Campania, and at present is found in the country of the Bergomates, at the extremity of Italy. It is said to have been lately discovered also in the province of Germany.

Formerly a mixture was made of copper fused with gold and silver, and the workmanship in this metal was considered even more valuable than the material itself; but, at the present day, it is difficult to say whether the workmanship in it, or the material, is the worse. But in this, as in everything else, what was formerly done for the sake of reputation, is now undertaken for the mere purpose of gain. This art was ascribed to the gods themselves, and men of rank in all countries endeavored to acquire fame by the practice of it, but we have now so entirely lost the method of making this valuable compound by fusion, that, for a long time past, not even chance itself has assumed the privilege which formerly belonged to art.

Next to this compound, so celebrated in antiquity, the Corinthian metal has been the most highly esteemed. This was a compound produced by accident, when Corinth was burnt at the time of its capture. There has been a wonderful mania with many for gaining possession of this metal. Verres, whom Cicero caused to be condemned, was proscribed by Antonius, along with Cicero, for no other reason than his refusal to give up some specimens of Corinthian bronze which were in his possession.

Corinth was captured in the third year of the 158th Olympiad, being the year of the City, 608,[210] some ages after the period when those artists flourished, who produced all the specimens of what these persons now call Corinthian metal. The only genuine Corinthian vessels are those which these men of taste metamorphose, sometimes into table dishes, sometimes into lamps, or even into wash-basins, without any regard to decency. They are of three kinds; the white variety, approaching very nearly to the splendor of silver, and in which that metal forms a large proportion of the compound; a second kind, in which the yellow color of gold predominates; and a third, in which all the metals are mixed in equal proportions. Besides these, there is another mixture, the composition of which it is impossible to describe, for although it has been formed into images and statues by the hand of man, it is chance that rules in the formation of the compound. The last is highly prized for its color, which approaches to that of liver, but is far inferior to the Corinthian metal, though much superior to the Æginetan and Delian, which long held the first rank.