With regard to the epithets red, bright, and gleaming, they are perfectly applicable to bronze in its polished condition, though they ill assort with the popular idea of bronze, which usually assigns to that metal the brown or greenish hues it acquires by oxidation and exposure to atmospheric influences. As a matter of fact, the red colour[48] of copper, though certainly rendered more yellow, is not greatly impaired by an admixture of tin within the proportions now used by engineers, viz. up to about two and a half ounces to the pound, or about 15 per cent. As to the bright and shining properties of the metal, Virgil, when no doubt speaking of bronze swords and shields, makes special mention of their glitter—[49] “Æratæque micant peltæ, micat æreus ensis.” Indeed, the mere fact of the swords of Homer being made of χαλκὸς is in favour of that metal being bronze, as pure copper would be singularly inapplicable to such a purpose, and certainly no copper sword would break into three or four pieces at a blow instead of being merely bent.[50] The bending of the points of the spear-heads against the shields of the adversaries is, however, in favour of these weapons having been of copper rather than of bronze.[51] As to Homer having been unacquainted with the fusion or alloying of metals, it may fairly be urged that without such knowledge it would have been impossible to work so freely as he has described, in gold, silver, and tin; and that the only reason for which Vulcan could have thrown the latter metal into the fire must have been in order to melt it. Whether steel was designated by the term κύανος is a matter of considerable doubt, and certainly in later times that word was applied to a substance occasionally used as a blue pigment, not improbably a dark blue carbonate of copper. Assuming the word to mean a metal, the difficulty in regarding it as significant of steel appears in a great measure due to the colour implied by the adjective form κύανεος, being a dark blue.[52] If, however, it were the custom even in those days to colour steel blue by exposing it, after it had been polished, to a certain degree of heat—as is usually done with watch and clock springs at the present day—the deep blue colour of the sky or sea might well receive such an epithet. That steel of some kind was known in Homeric days is abundantly evident from the process of hardening an axe by dipping it in cold water while heated, which is so graphically described in the Odyssey. If κύανος be really steel, we can also understand the epithet black[53] being occasionally applied to it, even though the adjective derived from it had the signification of blue.