2 Sm JOHN EVANS-^-TIXE BE.ONZE AGE. 



tin, — which produces a comparatively hard and malleable metal, 

 and the name of bronze is derived from a source which will not at 

 once be obvious to all. We often, in fact every week we hear 

 of men making the passage to India by Brindisi. The old name for 

 Brindisi was Brundusium, as all who have read their Horace will 

 be well aware ; and there is a metal, consisting in the main of 

 copper and tin, which was known as Brundusian metal, and from 

 that came the word " bronze." The Bronze Period is that which 

 is characterized by the use of that particular alloy of copper and 

 tin. In order to make this clear I must go into the question of 

 the division of pre-historic times. We find, if we trace the 

 progress of man backwards in time, that, though we might call the 

 present day the age of steel, of printing, of gimpowder, or what 

 not, yet that, going a little farther back, the principal tools and 

 weapons or other implements in use were not so much made of 

 steel as of iron, and looking farther back still, that the iron tools 

 superseded the use of those made of another metal — bronze. In 

 a similar manner we find bronze weapons coming in and super- 

 seding the stone weapons which were in use when no metal what- 

 ever was known for cutting purposes. We must not, however, 

 suppose that at what may be termed the close of the Stone Period 

 the use of stone entirely went out. Even at the present day we 

 find stone used, not only for the purpose of striking a light, but by 

 the modem cai-penter as a scraping tool in the modified form of 

 a broken bit of glass. 



In the same way as stone survived for special purposes when it 

 had gone out of general use in consequence of bronze having come 

 in as the material for cutting tools, so also when bronze went out of 

 use it still to some extent survived, partly for ornamental pui^joses 

 and partly for religious and ceremonial uses : for in all cases and in 

 all countries we find that the religious ceremonials continue and 

 preserve the usage of former times in a manner which no other 

 usages do. Those Ages, as I said before, overlap one another, 

 though they are as distinct as the three principal colours of the 

 spectrum, while, like them, they blend and intermingle, so that 

 it is hard indeed to say where one ends and the other begins. 



We have, in addition to the minor monuments discovered in 

 the soil, historical testimony as to the succession of these three 

 Ages. A great presumed authority on Homer, no less a person 

 than our former Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, has saicl that 

 the poet lived at a time when the use of iron was just com- 

 mencing, when the commodity was rare and its value very 

 great ; and Hesiod looks back with an admiring en\'y from 

 his Iron Age to the Heroic period, and in glowing terms 

 depicts a time when iron was not known and all implements 

 were made of bronze. Lucretius, in a well-known passage, states 

 that the ancient arms were the hands, nails, and teeth, as well as 

 stones, and occasionally branches torn from the trees. Afterwards 

 the power of iron was discovered, but, he adds, the use of bronze 

 was earlier than that of iron. There is also a very curious 



