The Venus (♀) of alchemy was called in the Semitic tongues _nhs_ or _nhsh_, in Arab _nahás_, and in Hebrew _nechosheth_ (נחשת). The term is popularly derived from a triliteral root signifying a snake, the crooked reptile, the serpent that is in the sea (Job xvi. 13; Is. xxvii. 1; Amos ix. 3, &c.); either because the metal is poisonous, like the Ophidæ, or from its brightness of burnish. Similarly, _dhahab_ (זהב), gold, was named from its splendour; and silver, also meaning money (_argentum_, argent), was _kasaf_ (כסף), the pale metal, the ‘white gold’ of Egypt. Both _nechosheth_ and _nahás_ apply equally to copper, bronze, and brass; hence we must probably read ‘copper Serpent’ for ‘_brazen_ Serpent,’ and ‘City of Copper’ for ‘City of _Brass_.’ [Heading: _COPPER IN CYPRUS._] There is the same ambiguity in the Greek and the Roman terms. The word χαλκός (_chalcus_) is popularly derived from χαλάειν, ‘to loose,’ because easily melted: I should prefer Khal or Khar, ‘Phœnicia,’ whose sons introduced it into Greece. The Hellenes dug it in Eubœa, where Chalcis-town[178] gave rise to the ‘stone’ χαλκῖτις (_chalcitis_, Pliny, xxxiv. 2). They also knew the ore as ἡ κύπρος; and when the Romans, who annexed Cyprus in B.C. 57, worked the mines, their produce, says Josephus, was called χαλκὸς κύπριος. _Chalcos_ is essentially ambiguous unless qualified by some epithet, as ἔρυθρος (red), μέλας (black), αἴθιοψ (Ethiopian colour = ruddy brown), πόλιος (iron-grey), and so forth. In fact, like _æs_, it is a generic term for the so-called ‘base metals’ (iron,[179] copper, tin, lead, and zinc), as opposed to the ‘noble metals’—gold and silver, to which we should add platinum. Worse still, χαλκεύς (_khalkefs_), a copper-smith, was applied to the blacksmith,[180] and even to the _chrysochoös_, or gold-caster, at the court of Nestor (‘Od.’ iii. 420, 432); and to χαλκεῖα or χαλκήϊα, smithies in general. The Roman _æs_, opposed to the _cyprium_ or _æs cyprium_[181] of Pliny (xxxiv. 2, 9), and _smaragdus cyprius_ or malachite, is equally misleading unless we render it ‘base metal.’ We know not how to translate Varro[182] when he speaks of the cymbals at the feast of Rhea: ‘Cymbalorum sonitus, ferramentorum jactandorum vi manuum, et ejus rei crepitus in colendo agro qui fit, significant quod ferramenta ea ideo erant ære’ (copper, bronze, brass?), ‘quod _antiqui_ illum colebant ære antequam ferrum esset inventum.’ Here he wisely limits the dictum to Greece and Rome.