The earliest smiths^[863] in Greece wrought not in iron but in brass, of which, at first, both arms and domestic implements were fashioned. In Mexico and Peru, where, likewise, copper^[864] was known before iron, they possessed the art of hardening it to so great a degree, that it would even cut stones and the closest-grained wood. The same or a similar process was known to the ancients, and might still, perhaps, be easily recovered were it any longer an object to be desired. The Greeks always retained a strong partiality for articles of brass, copper, and bronze, and besides statues,^[865] pillars,^[866] and trees, where the fruit was sometimes of gold,^[867] employed them in cups, urns, vases, and caldrons, with covers of the same metal.^[868] We also find mention made of brazen mangers, and even maps.^[869]

With tin, also, the Greeks, even in the Homeric age, were acquainted;^[870] and, among other uses which they, in later ages, made of it, was that of lining the inside of their cooking utensils.^[871]

At a period beyond the reach of history they obtained a knowledge of the use of both iron^[872] and steel, the invention of which they attributed to Hephaistos.^[873] Homer, who speaks of axes and other implements of steel, or, rather, of iron steeled at the edge, describes the process of forming it by immersion in cold water.^[874] In the manufacture of the Homeric swords steel only would appear to have been, in most cases, employed, since they were extremely brittle, and often shivered to pieces by a mere blow upon shield or helmet. To guard against this effect the superior and more delicate articles were, in later times, cooled not in water but in oil.^[875] The Spartans, we are told, quenched their iron money in vinegar which rendered it, they supposed, brittle and unmalleable, consequently of no value but as a token.^[876]

Among the earliest nations who excelled in the smelting of iron and the manufacture of steel were the Chalybes,^[877] who are said to have collected the ore from the beds of their rivers, and to have mingled therewith a certain quantity of the mineral pyrimachos. Aristotle, in describing the process of smelting, observes, that steel, in passing through the furnace, not only diminishes in quantity but in specific gravity also, that is to say, becomes less valuable. It was one merit of the Chalybean steel that it was not liable to rust. The method of preparing this metal which prevailed among the Celtiberians was this:^[878] they buried a number of iron plates in the earth, where they suffered them to remain until the greater portion was converted into rust.^[879] They then drew them forth and wrought them into various kinds of weapons, particularly swordblades, which were so keen that neither shields, nor helmets, nor sculls, were able to resist their edge. To this the complimentary Plutarch likens the language of the Spartans.^[880]

It was thought of much importance by the ancients to select for the quenching of steel water possessing certain occult qualities, whose existence was only to be detected by experiment. By these the river of the Chalybeans was thought to be distinguished,^[881] as well as the waters near Como, at Calatayud and Tarragona in Spain. Water has, likewise, been prepared, by a variety of infusions, for communicating a finer temper and greater hardness to steel, an example of which is mentioned in the history of the Duke Cosmo, who invented, according to Vasari,^[882] a liquid wherein were hardened the tools with which Francesco del Tadda was enabled to cut a fountain-basin, and several other articles, from a block of the hardest porphyry. Nothing, however, was more common than this operation among the ancients, both Greeks and Egyptians, by whom porphyry was cut into every variety of form, and invested with the highest polish.^[883]

The best steel appears to have been obtained from the Seres, from Parthia, and from India,^[884] where, when polished, it assumed the bright appearance of silver, and probably like that of Damascus contained a small proportion of this metal. That which came from Sinope and the Chalybes served for the manufacture of ordinary tools; the Laconian^[885] was wrought into files, augers, chisels, and the other implements of stone-cutters; the Lydian stood in high estimation with the sword-cutlers, and the manufacturers of razors and surgical instruments.^[886] The locks and keys^[887] of the ancients, if we may judge from the specimens found at Pompeii, were of a somewhat rude construction, though probably manufactured of the best iron.

The workshop and tools of the smith bore the closest possible resemblance to those of the present day; the bellows^[888] consisting of thin boards connected by flaps of cow-hide, and having a snout of iron, the anvil mounted on a high block, the hammer, the tongs, the vice, which require no particular description.

Respecting the quality of Grecian cutlery it must be acknowledged that our information is exceedingly scanty, though we may reasonably infer, that it often possessed the greatest excellence and beauty from the perfection to which they had undoubtedly brought the manufacture of arms. In this branch of industry the Delphians would seem to have obtained celebrity, though the form and uses of their knives, alluded to in a comparison by Aristotle,^[889] can be looked upon only as matter of conjecture. It seems to me, that, like Hudibras’ dagger, they would serve for a variety of purposes, as a poignard for example, as a sacrificial instrument, and as a common knife:

There was a very elegant sort of knives among the Athenians, adorned with ivory handles, delicately carved with the figures of animals, among which was that of a crouching lioness.^[890] For this purpose the ivory was frequently stained of different colours, as pink, or crimson, or purple, according to the fancy of the workman. Knife-handles were sometimes also made of the roots of the lotos,^[891] which, no doubt, took a fine polish and were beautifully clouded. Their scissors, bodkins, sailmakers’ needles, common needles, pins,^[892] and other articles of this description, would seem to have been manufactured with much neatness.

But the most flourishing trade in Greece was probably that of the armourer,^[893] which, at almost every period of her history, was in constant request. Many, probably, of the useful arts owed much of the progress they made to the passion of the Greeks for arms, which led them industriously to study and invent whatever could add to their splendour or efficiency. We need not now go back to the times when sticks and stones and pointed reeds formed the national weapons.^[894] Among the very first steps in civilisation were improvements in the art of self-defence; for, wherever men have found it necessary to create property, they have felt it to be equally so to invent weapons for protecting themselves in the enjoyment of it. Accordingly the Greeks, long before the birth of history, had surrounded themselves by numerous instruments of destruction, and learned to cover their bodies with armour infinitely varied in materials and workmanship.

Upon none of their weapons, however, did they bestow greater attention than on the sword, which if it did not, as among certain barbarians, constitute one of the objects of their worship,^[895] was in most cases their inseparable companion through life, and descended with them even to the grave. Thus we find, that, when Cimon opened, at Scyros, the grave of Theseus, the national hero of Attica, he found beside the skeleton a spearhead and sword of brass.^[896] Their blades were of many different shapes and dimensions: they had the long, sharp, double-edged rapier; the short cut and thrust; the crooked scimitar, the sabre, and the broad-sword.^[897] These were generally of the finest steel, highly polished, and sometimes damaskened exactly like those blades afterwards manufactured at Damascus. The sheath was sometimes of ivory, sometimes of gold or silver or tin or other inferior metal.^[898] To the first-mentioned substance we have an allusion in a saying of Diogenes, who on hearing a handsome young man make use of low language, exclaimed: “How shameless! to draw forth a sword of lead from a sheath of ivory.”^[899] The hilts were often extremely superb, of costly materials, and wrought in the most fanciful shapes. We read, for example, of sword-handles studded or inlaid with gold, or even composed entirely of that metal, or of silver.^[900] Ivory too, and amber,^[901] and terebinth,^[902] polished and black as ebony, and a variety of other woods and substances, stained black with nut-gall,^[903] were employed for this purpose. The father of Demosthenes, who kept a large manufactory of arms, left behind him a considerable quantity of ivory and gall-nuts^[904] which he had purchased as well for his own use as to supply other armourers in a smaller way. Of daggers there were various kinds, some of a larger size, worn suspended on the thigh with the sword, as the hunting knife was by the Persian youth; others much smaller, which seem to have been carried about concealed under the armpit, as is still the fashion in the East. To this practice Socrates alludes in his conversation with Polos of Agrigentum,^[905] on the power possessed in states by tyrants, whom he compares to one who should go forth into the marketplace with an enchiridion concealed about him, and for that reason fancy it in his power to take away every man’s life, because he could undoubtedly kill any one he pleased.

Next in importance perhaps was the manufacture of javelins and spears.^[906] Of the former, the heads,^[907] light though sometimes broad, were mounted on slender ashen shafts shod with iron, or on the long Cretan reed^[908] which abounded in the marshes about Haliartos in Bœotia. These javelins, in more modern times, were furnished with a looped thong, by which when the darter had missed his aim, they could be drawn back.^[909] The best kind were supposed to be manufactured in Bœotia. Spear-shafts were likewise sometimes of ash,^[910] but more frequently of cornel wood,^[911] and occasionally, as in the case of the Macedonian sarissa, eighteen feet long. Like the javelin, the spear also was shod sharp with iron, in order the more easily to be fixed upright in the earth, when soldiers slept abroad in the fields.^[912] This part of the iron-work, which was hollow and received the shaft into it, is said to have been shaped like a lizard, doubtless represented as holding the point of the handle in its mouth. Projections resembling legs extended on both sides, designed to prevent the spear from sinking too deep into the ground. In the lances of the cavalry there was, as some suppose, a small notch to receive the point of the horseman’s foot when mounting his steed. The spear-head, generally of iron or steel, was among the Arab allies of Xerxes formed of goat’s horn, fashioned like the iron of a lance.^[913]

The bows^[914] of the ancients were most commonly composed of horn, tipped with gold or other metal at either end. Among the barbarous nations there were those who manufactured them of cane or palm-branches, or even of the long stem of the date.^[915] The bowstring was of thong or horse-hair. Reeds generally constituted the shafts of their arrows,^[916] which were headed with iron or copper, or hard pointed stones, as those of the Arabs in the army of Xerxes, who employed for this purpose the same stones wherewith they engraved their seals.^[917] Arrows were frequently winged with eagles’ feathers, and tinged at the point with poison.^[918] In sieges they were often armed with fire.^[919]

Besides the above, there were several other implements of destruction. The Greeks made use of the club, the battle-axe, and the sling.^[920] And a tribe of barbarians, once mentioned in history, depended entirely on their daggers, and a noosed rope of twisted thongs,^[921] which they used for entangling and overthrowing man or horse, much in the same manner as the lasso is now employed in the Pampas of South America.

If we turn now to their armour, we shall find that they displayed in its manufacture the greatest possible skill, taste, and ingenuity. Their helmets, cuirasses, shields, cuisses, and greaves, were made of polished steel, or brass, or tin, sometimes curiously figured, and inlaid with metals of many different colours, and polished to an exceeding brightness,^[922] sometimes adorned with representations in relief. Frequently they went cased in shirts of mail, composed of innumerable small metallic plates, lapping over each other so as to resemble the scales of fishes. Occasionally the opulent appeared on the field of battle in golden armour,^[923] though this piece of ostentation was chiefly confined to the barbarians.^[924] The armourers’ craft, however, seems to have gone on improving in proportion as the courage of the nation deteriorated, until at length, in Macedonian times, armour of enormous weight, and, literally, impenetrable, came into use. Thus Zoilos manufactured for Demetrios Poliorcetes two coats-of-mail,^[925] of a steel so hard, that the surface could scarcely be grazed by an arrow discharged from a catapult. The whole suit weighed no less than one hundred and thirty pounds, exactly twice as much as an ordinary suit of armour.

Helmets^[926] were manufactured of numerous materials. First, in the ruder ages, they were in reality nothing more than so many close skull-caps made of the skins^[927] of otters or water-dogs, with the hair on,^[928] or foxes, or weasels, or goats, or bulls, or lions. But as the arts of civilisation improved, metal casques were soon substituted for these primitive defences, some of which, of wrought steel, were highly polished, and shone like burnished silver. That of Alexander was manufactured by Theophilos.^[929] The helmet consisted of a variety of parts: as, first, the casque itself, inlaid with brass and iron,^[930] which enclosed and defended the head, the front brim projecting over the forehead; the vizor, which dropped over the whole face; the strap, often richly embroidered or studded with jewels,^[931] passing under the chin; and the ridge, or cone, on the summit, from which rose the plumes, or crest.^[932] This crest, double, treble, or even quadruple, according to the taste or fancy of the wearer, sometimes consisted of long drooping ostrich feathers,^[933] sometimes of horse-hair, either black or dyed of different colours, which, trembling and floating over the warrior’s head, appeared to augment his stature while it added to the terror of his aspect. King Pyrrhos, we are told, wore upon his helmet the horns of a goat, symbolical of the power of Macedon;^[934] and the Asiatic Thracians flanked their crests with the horns and ears of an ox in brass.^[935] To break the force of blows from clubs or heavy battle-axes, the crown of the helmet was thickly lined with sponge or soft wool.^[936] Mention is likewise made of helmets of plaited cord of wood and leather,^[937] and the skins of horses’ heads, retaining the ears and the mane.^[938]

In the manufacture of corslets and cuirasses^[939] much industry and ability was exhibited. The former were generally composed of linen or hempen twine curiously wrought, and doubled or trebled according to the desire of the purchaser,^[940] and worn chiefly in the chase;^[941] others consisted of thick leathern jerkins, covered with metallic scales,^[942] single, double, or treble, and fastened to each other by a series of hooks. In lieu of these plates was sometimes substituted a coating of intertwisted rings, resembling in some respects the chain armour of a later age. Wooden cuirasses were also sometimes worn.^[943] The Sarmatians^[944] possessing no iron, headed their darts and javelins with bone, and employed very extraordinary materials in the manufacture of their cuirasses. Collecting carefully all the hoofs of such horses as died, they cut them into laminæ, resembling in form the scales of a fish. These they sewed together with the nerves of horses or oxen, and thus produced a species of breastplate which for elegance and utility was scarcely inferior to those of the Greeks. In the manufacture of linen corslets^[945] the Egyptians displayed peculiar excellence, at least the description of one of them which history has preserved is calculated to create a very high idea of their ingenuity. It was curiously wrought, we are told, with fine bobbins, each composed of three hundred and sixty threads, distinctly visible, adorned with numerous figures of animals interwoven with cotton and gold.^[946] Among the Greeks this piece of armour was often richly embroidered by the ladies of the warrior’s family, whom, on more than one occasion, we find busy at this task on the eve of battle. The cuirasses of brass or steel were finely polished and buttoned under the arm. Even the horses were furnished with breastplates and frontlets,^[947] and occasionally their flanks also were protected by armour. The warrior’s greaves^[948] were manufactured of copper, brass, tin, or other metal, and fastened about the legs with silver buttons. Archers seem commonly to have worn a species of gloves or fingerlings.^[949]

The manufacture of shields^[950] underwent great fluctuations at different periods of Grecian history, and even in the same age there existed numerous and extraordinary differences in their materials, form, and structure. In early times they consisted simply of a piece of circular basket-work, plaited for the sake of lightness with vine-branches^[951] or willows; or were made of a solid piece of wood scooped into the proper form, and covered with one or more coats of leather. The wood usually preferred for this use was that of the elder, the beach, the poplar, and the fig; and the leather was generally tough bull-hide,^[952] with or without the hair, though we read of nations, as the Ethiopians, who made use for this purpose of the skins of cranes.^[953] The same people at the present day have discovered that the hide of the crocodile, dressed with the scales on, forms a better integument for their bucklers. Among the Homeric heroes the wooden framework was protected by many folds of leather, amounting sometimes to seven, to which were added plates of brass, silver, gold, or tin. Even when the face of the shield was composed of some inferior metal, the rim seems frequently to have been of gold.

In later times shields were usually manufactured of brass or steel, wrought and fashioned with the greatest care, and polished like a mirror. Occasionally, likewise, they were inlaid with purple, ivory, and gold,^[954] or painted white, or crusted with gold and silver, as among the Samnites.^[955] From the remotest antiquity, moreover, it was customary to paint upon shields a number of devices, each warrior selecting one for himself,^[956] which, like the armorial bearings of the knights of chivalry, distinguished him from his comrades in battle. Thus Perseus chose the head of the Gorgon Medusa;^[957] Tydeus the aspect of the face of the mighty heavens, including the full moon, surrounded by flaming stars;^[958] Eteocles bore before him the figure of a warrior scaling a lofty tower, while Hippomedon selected, as the emblem of his character, the figure of Typhœos breathing forth fire and smoke. Every reader will remember the varied imagery that crowded the shield of the Homeric Achilles, together with the scenes which Hesiod, in imitation, depicts on the buckler of Heracles. In the historical period^[959] the people of Sicyon had a sigma, the initial letter in the name of their capital, painted on their shields.^[960] These ornaments, as well as the handles, it is said, owed their origin to the invention of the Carians. The form of the shield exhibited much variety. One kind, for example, was small and circular,^[961] another oblong or parallelogrammatic, and of dimensions so large as to cover the whole body, and allow the fallen warrior to be borne home on it as upon a bier; others were rhomboidal,^[962] or semilunar, or shaped like an ivy-leaf. But whatever may have been their figure, there always projected from the centre of the external face a large boss, with a smaller one, generally pointed, on the middle of it. This the soldiers dashed in the countenances of the enemy. Within, two bars, stretching from rim to rim, and crossing each other like the letter X, gave the warrior, who passed his left arm behind them, greater power over his defence, while a smaller handle, on the fore part of the shield, received his grasp.^[963] Occasionally, the place of these bars was supplied by metallic or wooden handles, exactly of a size to receive the arm; and, by means of a leathern strap, the buckler, when marching, was usually suspended on the shoulder.^[964] In time of peace both the shield and the helmet were laid up, each in its appropriate case.^[965] Besides the manufacturers of arms, who supplied states with large orders, there were numerous armourers on a smaller scale,^[966] whose shops exhibited a rich and varied assortment of shields, helmets, and every kind of weapon.

The metals employed in the fabrication of arms were obtained partly from mines found in Greece itself, partly by commerce from the surrounding countries.^[967] On the methods of mining which prevailed among the Greeks our information is peculiarly scanty. We know, however, that, at Laurion,^[968] the Athenians made use of both shafts and adits, and that in chambering they employed much timber.^[969] To prevent the falling in of the superincumbent mountain there were left at intervals vast pillars,^[970] the cutting away of which was by law prohibited on pain of death. In the potter’s-clay mines of Samos, where the veins, running generally between beds of rock, were exceedingly shallow, seldom exceeding two feet in depth, the miners, as in the thin veins of our own coal mines, were compelled while at work to lie on their back or sides, which, it may be presumed, was the practice in other mines under similar circumstances. Whether they possessed any means of protecting themselves against the fire-damps or malaria,^[971] which, we know, prevailed greatly at Laurion,^[972] is a matter of much uncertainty. In Spain, the mines ran deep into the earth, and were of prodigious extent, having transverse passages and caverns of great dimensions and elevation.

In an old shaft discovered in the mountains of Santo Spirito,^[973] the sides were supported by masonry; large pools of water were found in some of the chambers, while the explorers could hear afar off the incessant roar of waterfalls. Here and there the passages were nearly blocked up by masses of gold and silver ore.^[974]

How the water was drained off, or the ore brought to the surface of the earth, no ancient author has explained. When extracted, however, it was pounded in a stone mortar with an iron pestle, then passed through a sieve, and transferred to the smelting furnace.^[975]

The account transmitted to us of the gold mines of Egypt may probably throw some light on the practice which prevailed among the Greeks. In them we find an almost exact type of the degrading toil and disregard of danger and decency recently brought to light among our own subterranean population. There, indeed, the workmen were forced to their task by the direct compulsion of a tyrannical government; while in Great Britain the constraint is enveloped by a cloud of circumstances which conceal, though they scarcely soften, the stern laws of necessity.

The Egyptian gold mines were situated in the great eastern desert, on the shores of the Red Sea. They had been worked from the remotest antiquity; in proof of which it is related, that copper pickaxes were frequently found in the deserted shafts and galleries, beside incredible heaps of human bones, relics of the multitudes who had perished there by malaria, or fire-damps, or the falling of rocks, or more probably from the incessant oppression to which they were subjected.^[976] In fact the benevolent historian,^[977] to whom we are indebted for nearly all we know on this curious subject, felt so strongly for the sufferings of these wretched artificers of Egyptian grandeur, that he pronounced death in their case to be more desirable than life.^[978] But the most miserable possess resources and springs of gratification unknown to philosophers and the professors of literature; and, we may be sure, that even those outcasts who brought up gold from the bowels of the earth to adorn the thrones and palaces of the Pharaohs, knew how to extract from their bitter employment some few sweets of sufficient efficacy to render life endurable.

No doubt the processes of those early times were sufficiently rude. When about to open a new shaft or adit the Inspectors of the mines appear carefully to have examined the different faces of the mountain, sombre, scarped, and barren to the last degree; and having fixed upon a spot in the face of some cliff, the first operation was to render the rock friable by the application of powerful fires, which were kindled with wood at its base. The more robust of the workmen then proceeded with their pickaxes to the excavation of the galleries, which seldom or never proceeded in a right line; but following the direction of the metallic veins, mounted, descended, branched off obliquely to the left or to the right; and progressing in this manner, sometimes perforated the whole bulk of the mountain, and striking downwards, like the roots of trees, extended even to the sea.^[979] The men employed in getting the ore, followed incessantly by task-masters with instruments of chastisement in their hands, were seldom permitted to proportion their exertions to their strength; but often toiled on apparently till they dropped, when their bones joined the heaps of those who had fallen before them. While thus engaged, more especially when united in great numbers they had clambered the rocks to a considerable height, they presented an extraordinary spectacle; for each miner^[980] carried a lamp bound to his forehead, though how, when they bent or kneeled, or worked sideways, it escaped being extinguished seems difficult of explanation.

The laborious operation of collecting and hurrying the ore was performed by boys of tender age, who deposited it beyond the mouth of the shaft. Another class of workmen, consisting chiefly of the aged and the infirm, now bore the metalliferous stones to that part of the works where the founders were stationed. These were powerful and robust men in the flower of their age, who, with large stone mortars and iron pestles, reduced, under the eye of rigid Inspectors, the ore to small fragments not exceeding a vetch in size.^[981] This done, it was transferred to the mills which were turned by women, the wives and daughters of the miners, who, with the exception of a slender covering about the waist, were entirely naked, misery in all times and places rendering people contemptuous of appearances and indifferent to morality.^[982] These mills, heavy no doubt and difficult to work, were turned by six women, three on either side. They would appear, however, to have answered well the purpose for which they were designed, since the ore, we are told, was reduced by them to the fineness of flour; after which it was handed over to the Selangeus, the last link in that long chain of operators which connected the mine with the smelting furnace. The business of the Selangeus consisted in separating the metal from the matrix in which it had been produced. For this purpose, the auriferous dust was cast in a heap upon a broad polished board slightly inclined,^[983] and there washed and triturated until the greater part of the terrene particles had been, by soft sponges and water, separated from the gold, which was next put into earthen vessels with small quantities of lead, tin, salt, and barley-bran, and placed in the smelting furnace, where it was subjected, for five days and nights, to the flames. This done, the virgin gold came forth glittering and pure as if it had not been wrung from human agony or sullied by human tears.