BOOK IX.

423

placed on the anvil, and repeatedly beaten by the large iron hammer that israised by the cams of an axle turned by a water-wheel. Not long afterwardit is taken up with tongs and placed under the same hammer, and cut up witha sharp iron into four, five, or six pieces, according to whether it is large orsmall. These pieces, after they have been re-heated in the blacksmith’s forgeand again placed on the anvil, are shaped by the smith into square bars or intoploughshares or tyres, but mainly into bars. Four, six, or eight of these barsweigh one-fifth of a centumpondium, and from these they make various imple-ments. During the blows from the hammer by which it is shaped by the smith,a youth pours water with a ladle on to the glowing iron, and this is why theblows make such a loud sound that they may be heard a long distance fromthe works. The masses, if they remain and settle in the crucible of the

furnace in which the iron is smelted, become hard iron which can only be

hammered with difficulty, and from these they make the iron-shod heads forthe stamps, and such-like very hard articles.

But to iron ore which is cupriferous, or which when heated 56 meltswith difficulty, it is necessary for us to give a fiercer fire and more labour ;because not only must we separate the parts of it in which there is metal fromthose in which there is no metal, and break it up by dry stamps, but we mustalso roast it, so that the other metals and noxious juices may be exhaled ;and we must wash it, so that the lighter parts may be separated from it.Such ores are smelted in a furnace similar to the blast furnace, but much

wider and higher, so that it may hold a great quantity of ore and much

charcoal ; mounting the stairs at the side of the furnace, the smelters fillit partly with fragments of ore not larger than nuts, and partly withcharcoal; and from this kind of ore once or twice smelted they make ironwhich is suitable for re-heating in the blacksmith’s forge, after it is flattenedout with the large iron hammer and cut into pieces with the sharp iron.

By skill with fire and fluxes is made that kind of iron from which steelis made, which the Greeks call aro/aw/xa. Iron should be selected whichis easy to melt, is hard and malleable. Now although iron may besmelted from ore which contains other metals, yet it is then either softor brittle ; such (iron) must be broken up into small pieces when it is

(Brass is modern poetic licence for copper or bronze). Also, in the Odyssey (ix, 4^ 5 ) whenHomer describes how Ulysses plunged the stake into Cyclop s eye, we have the first positiveevidence of steel, although hard iron mentioned in the Tribute of Yii, above referred to, issometimes given as steel:

“ And as when armourers temper m the ford“ The keen-edg’d pole-axe, or the shining sword,

“ The red-hot metal hisses in the lake.”

No doubt early wrought-iron was made in the same manner as Agricola describes. Weare, however, not so clear as to the methods of making steel. Under primitive methods ofmaking wrought-iron it is quite possible to carburize the iron sufficiently to make steel directfrom ore. The primitive method of India and Japan was to enclose lumps of wrought-iron insealed crucibles with charcoal and sawdust, and heat them over a long period. Neither Plinynor any of the other authors of the period previous to the Christian Era give us much helpon steel metallurgy, although certain obscure expressions of Aristotle have been called upon(for instance, St. John V. Day, Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel, London, 1877, p. * 34 ) t0prove its manufacture by immersing wrought-iron in molten cast-iron. ( ,, .

5li Quae vel aerosa est, vel coda. It is by no means certain that coda, “ cooked isrightly translated, for the author has not hitherto used this expression for heated. This maybe residues from roasting and leaching pyrites for vitriol, etc.