390 BOOK IX. 



much gold or silver, are replenished again from crude pyrites alone. If 

 from this poor ore, with melted pyrites alone, material for cakes cannot 

 be made, there are added other fluxes which have not previously been 

 melted. These fluxes are, namely, lead ore, stones easily fused by fire 

 of the second order and sand made from them, limestone, tophus, white 

 schist, and iron stone^^. 



Although this method of smelting ores is rough and might not seem to 

 be of great use, yet it is clever and useful ; for a great weight of ores, in 

 which the gold, silver, or copper are in small quantities, may be reduced into 

 a few cakes containing all the metal. If on being first melted they are too 

 crude to be suitable for the second melting, in which the lead absorbs the 

 precious metals that are in the cakes, or in which the copper is melted out of 

 them, yet they can be made suitable if they are repeatedly roasted, some- 

 times as often as seven or eight times, as I have explained in the last book. 

 Smelters of this kind are so clever and expert, that in smelting they take out 

 all the gold and silver which the assayer in assaying the ores has stated to be 

 contained in them, because if during the first operation, when he makes the 

 cakes, there is a drachma of gold or half an uncia of silver lost from the ores, 

 the smelter obtains it from the slags by the second smelting. This method of 

 smelting ores is old and very common to most of those who use other methods. 



Although lead ores are usually smelted in the third furnace — whose tap- 

 hole is always open, — yet not a few people melt them in special furnaces by a 

 method which I will briefly explain. The Carni^^ first bum such lead ores, 

 and afterward break and crush them with large round mallets. Between 

 the two low walls of a hearth, which is inside a furnace made of and vaulted 

 with a rock that resists injury by the fire and does not burn into chalk, they 

 place green wood with a layer of dry wood on the top of it ; then they throw 

 the ore on to this, and when the wood is kindled the lead drips down and 

 runs on to the underlying sloping hearth^^. This hearth is made of pulverised 



"For discussion of these fluxes see note page 232. 



*^Carni. Probably the people of modern Austrian Carniola, which lies south of Styria 

 and west of Croatia. 



^Historical Note on Smelting Lead and Silver. — The history of lead and silver 

 smelting is by no means a sequent array of exact facts. With one possible exception, lead does 

 not appear upon the historical horizon until long after silver, and yet their metallurgy is so 

 inextricably mixed that neither can be considered wholly by itself. As silver does not occur 

 native in any such quantities as would have supplied the amounts possessed by the Ancients, 

 we must, therefore, assume its reduction by either (i) intricate chemical processes, (2) amalga- 

 mation, (3) reduction with copper, (4) reduction with lead. It is impossible to conceive of the 

 first with the ancient knowledge of chemistry ; the second (see note 12, p. 297) does not appear 

 to have been known until after Roman times ; in any event, quicksilver appears only at about 

 400 B.C. The third was impossible, as the parting of silver from copper without lead involves 

 metallurgy only possible during the last century. Therefore, one is driven to the conclusion 

 that the fourth case obtained, and that the lead must have been known practically contem- 

 poraneously with silver. There is a leaden figure exhibited in the British Museum among the 

 articles recovered from the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, and considered to be of the Archaic 

 period — prior to 3800 B.C. The earliest known Egyptian silver appears to be a necklace 

 of beads, supposed to be of the XII. Dynasty (2400 B.C.), which is described in the 17th 

 Memoir, Egyptian Exploration Fund (London, 1898, p. 22). With this exception of the 

 above-mentioned lead specimen, silver articles antedate positive evidence of lead by nearly a 

 millennium, and if we assume lead as a necessary factor in silver production, we must conclude 

 it was known long prior to any direct (except the above solitary possibility) evidence of lead 

 itself. Further, if we are to conclude its necessary association with silver, we must assume a 

 knowledge of cupellation for the parting of the two metals. Lead is mentioned in 1500 B.C. 



