Analyses of Ancient Alloys. 93 



ration of iron must have been a very tedious and expensive opera- 

 tion, to a people having but a scanty knowledge of the metallurgic 

 arts, and we accordingly find a kind of compromise between its known 

 utility and high commercial value in the case above quoted, in which 

 the cutting edge alone is made of steel. At the present day, a valu- 

 able discovery made in any part of the world would speedily become 

 known and appreciated throughout its whole extent, but at the re- 

 mote time in which iron was first reduced from its ore, so little com- 

 munication existed between the various nations, that that which 

 might be well known and highly valued by the inhabitants of one 

 country or state, might be quite unheard of in another, and conse- 

 quently the uses of this metal may for a long time have been limited 

 to a few districts where accident, or the smelting of some other 

 mineral, had first revealed its presence. In the earliest ages of re- 

 corded history, when the world was divided into numerous petty 

 states and principalities, the constant feuds, which were the principal 

 occupation of mankind, would certainly cause a demand for arms and 

 weapons of defence. Such a state of things must, however, operate 

 most unfavourably on the cultivation of the arts ; and it is not reason- 

 able to suppose that a conquering army on entering a foreign territory 

 would have sufficient leisure to acquire the arts of the conquered 

 nation, and consequently, although they might find the arms of their 

 enemies superior to their own, they would still be ignorant of the 

 means by which they were manufactured; and thus the secret would 

 remain for a long period in the possession of its first discoverers. At 

 what precise epoch weapons of iron came into general use among 

 the Romans, we have not sufficient information to decide, but in the 

 time of Augustus* iron mines were worked to a considerable extent 

 in the Noric Alps (now lUyria), and from them iron of the first 

 quality was obtained — this was used for making the best weapons, 

 and hence " Noricus ensis," was as much synonymous for a good 

 sword, as a Toledo, or Andrea Ferrara blade in more modern times. f 

 In this sense it is used by Horace, Book i., ode xvi., v. 9. At the 

 time in which Pliny wrote his " HistoriaNaturalis," iron was almost 

 universally employed, not only for the blades of swords, but also for 

 the manufacture of the different cutting instruments used for the pur- 

 poses of daily life, as he both describes the metal and the means of 

 forging it, and also refers to the difficulty of tempering steel in order 

 to give it the requisite degree of hardness. 



From these considerations, it is evident that the various weapons 

 of bronze must be of great antiquity, since iron was in common use 

 prior to the Christian era, and I have therefore placed the analyses 

 of these instruments, in a part of the series which corresponds to 

 that period, notwithstanding that in all probability some of them 

 may belong to a much earlier date. 



* B. 0. 30. t Jacob on the Precious Metals, I, 88. 



