4.2 NOTES ON BRONZE. 



alloy. " Fine copper, precious as gold " was the material, an 

 alternative rendering being "yellow as gold." * (Ez. viii. 27). 

 Besides tin, zinc, gold and silver, there are two other metals used 

 in bronze alloy, lead and a little iron in a few instances. This 

 last produced a reddish colour. Lead often enters into the 

 composition in ancient and modern times. Pliny says that lead 

 and silver were added to produce certain colours in bronze 

 statues. He tells us that, with the addition of a tenth of lead 

 and a twentieth of silver to the copper, the bronze " maxime 

 colorem bibit quern Graecanicum vocant " (xxxiv. 20). What the 

 Graecanic colour was like he does not say, however, nor do 

 Valpy's notes. But it was, it seems, purple of some kind, for 

 just after he has the dictum, " cyprio si addatur plumbum colos 

 purpurae fit in statuarum praetextis." Lead, however, was used 

 not only for colour's sake, one sort of bronze prepared for 

 making pots and pans (temperatura ollaria) having three or four 

 per cent, of lead. The use of lead in these vessels may have 

 been to make them less brittle, for Pliny speaks of the copper, 

 lead and silver alloy as " ass tenerrima," very soft bronze. If so, 

 bronze, if it may be so called, of copper and lead only, was a 

 poor material for money. And yet for many years it seems the 

 Romans so used it. Lead bronze was found, on analysis, to be 

 the material of a collection of modern Chinese and Japanese art 

 vessels shown in Paris some years ago. They were remarkable 

 for their dark, blackish hue. Lead, again, enters into the alloy 

 of which guns are made. It probably accounts for the greyness 

 of gun-metal. A good deal has been said about varieties of 

 bronze. But there is one other which must be named, and that 

 the most interesting of all, in connection with the Dorset 

 Museum. It is a sort in which tin seems to predominate greatly. 

 In 1882 six little socket-celts were found in a barrow, near 

 Eggardon. They are rough from the mould, unsharpened. Now, 

 three of them show nothing of the usual bronze colour. They are 



* The revised version lias " flue blight bi'ass." The ancient Syriac translation 

 "good Corinthian brass." 



