With respect to the metal in the Hissarlik remains, Dr. Schliemann
remarks (i. 31): ‘The only objects of iron which I found were a key
of curious shape and a few arrows and nails close to the surface.’ It
is no proof that it was used because Homer some centuries afterwards
spoke of the κύανος (_cyanus_), steel tempered blue, a word which even
in antiquity was translated by χάλυψ (_chalybs_, steel). The explorer
remarks: ‘Articles of steel may have existed: I believe positively that
they did exist; but they have vanished without leaving a trace of their
existence; for, as we know, iron and steel become decomposed much more
readily than copper.’ Yet, so contradictory is the whole book, and so
uncertain are its conclusions, we find,[361] ‘No. 4. Drillings of one
of the Trojan sling-bullets, externally covered with verdigris, and
internally the colour of iron’; while the assay shows that it consisted
chiefly of copper and sulphur. Among the contemporary (?) finds of
Mycenæ, which not a few authorities have pronounced to be Byzantine,
and another observer Keltic,[362] Dr. Schliemann met with iron in
the shape of knives and keys; but he holds these articles to be of
comparatively late date, not older than the fifth century B.C.[363] At
that time iron must have been general throughout Greece. In the fourth
century, Aristotle (‘Meteorologica’) treats at length upon iron and its
modifications. One passage runs: ‘Wrought iron may be so cast as to be
made liquid and to reharden; and thus it is they are wont to make steel
(τὸ στόμωμα); for the scoria of iron subsides and is purged off by the
bottom, and when it is often defæcated and cleansed, this is steel.
But this they do not often, because of the great waste, and because it
loses much weight in refining; but iron is so much the more excellent
the more recrement it has.’ Daimachus, Aristotle’s contemporary, says
of steels (τῶν στομωμάτων), ‘There is the Chalybdic,[364] the Synopic,
the Lydian, and the Lacedæmonian. The Chalybdic is best for carpenters’
tools; the Lacedæmonian for files, drills, gravers, and stone-chisels;
the Lydian also is suited for files, and for knives, razors, and
rasps.’ Avicenna (Abu Ali Siná), in his fifth book, ‘De Anima,’
according to Roger Bacon, has three species of the metal: (1) Iron,
good for hammers and anvils, but not for cutting tools; (2) Steel,[365]
which is purer and has more heat in it; it is therefore less
malleable, but better able to take an edge; and (3) Andena, ductile and
malleable under a low degree of heat, and intermediate between iron and
steel. Apparently the latter is the Hindiah or Hindiyáneh, the Ferrum
Indicum and the Ondanique of Marco Polo (i. 17).
[Heading: _ROMAN IRON._]
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