II. _Philinus._ The guides were going through their lectures, as prepared, showing no regard for our entreaties that they would cut short their periods and skip most of the inscriptions. The stranger was but moderately interested in the form and workmanship of the different statues; it appears that he has [Sidenote: B] seen many beautiful objects of art. What he did admire was the lustre on the bronze, unlike rust or deposit, but rather resembling a coat of deep shining blue, so much so, that it rather well became the sea-captains, with whom the round had begun, standing up out of the deep so naively with the true sea tint. ‘Now was there’, he asked, ‘some receipt of pharmacy known to the old artists in brass like that method of tempering swords of which we read? It was forgotten in time, and then bronze had a truce from works of war. As to the Corinthian bronze, that came by its beautiful colour accidentally, not through art. A fire spread over a house in which were stored some gold and silver and a large quantity of bronze. The whole was fused into one stream of metal, which took its name [Sidenote: C] from the bronze, as the largest ingredient.’ Theon broke in: ‘We have heard a different story, with a spice of mischief in it. A Corinthian bronze-worker found a chest containing much gold. Fearing discovery, he chipped it off little by little, and quietly mixed the bits with the bronze; the result was a marvellous blend, which he sold at a high price, as people were delighted with the beauty of the colour. However, the one story is as mythical as the other; what we may suppose is that some method was known of mixing and preparing, much as now they mix gold with silver, and get a peculiar and rare effect, [Sidenote: D] which to me appears a sickly pallor and a loss of colour with no beauty in it.’ III. ‘What has been the cause, then,’ said Diogenianus, ‘do you think, of the colour of the bronze here?’ ‘Here is a case’, said Theon, ‘in which, of the first and most natural elements which are or ever will be, fire, earth, air, water, none approaches or touches the bronze, save air only: clearly then, air is the agent; from its constant presence and contact the bronze gets its exceptional quality, or perhaps _Thus much you knew before Theognis was_,[84]