BOOK XL 521 



ing products to the cupellation furnace, where the lead is separated from the 

 silver. The hooked bar has an iron handle two feet long, in which is set a 

 wooden one four feet long. The silver-lead which runs out into the receiving- 

 pit is poured out by the refiner with a bronze ladle into eight copper moulds, 

 which are two palms and three digits in diameter ; these are first smeared 

 with a lute wash so that the cakes of silver-lead may more easily fall out 

 when they are turned over. If the supply of moulds fails because the silver- 

 lead flows down too rapidly into the receiving-pit, then water is poured on them, 

 in order that the cakes may cool and be taken out of them more rapidly ; 

 thus the same moulds may be used again immediately ; if no such necessity 

 urges the refiner, he washes over the empty moulds with a lute wash. The 

 ladle is exactly similar to that which is used in pouring out the metals that 

 are melted in the blast furnace. When all the silver-lead has run down from 

 the passage into the receiving-pit, and has been poured out into copper 

 moulds, the thorns are drawn out of the passage into the receiving-pit 

 with a rabble ; afterward they are raked on to the ground from the receiving- 

 pit, thrown with a shovel into a wheelbarrow, and, having been conveyed 

 away to a heap, are melted once again. The blade of the rabble is two palms 

 and as many digits long, two palms and a digit wide, and joined to its 

 back is an iron handle three feet long ; into the iron handle is inserted a 

 wooden one as many feet in length. 



The residue cakes, after the silver-lead has been liquated from the 

 copper, are called " exhausted liquation cakes " (fathiscentes), because when 

 thus smelted they appear to be dried up. By placing a crowbar under the 

 cakes they are raised up, seized with tongs, and placed in the wheelbarrow ; 

 they are then conveyed away to the furnace in which they are " dried." 

 The crowbar is somewhat similar to those generally used to chip off the 

 accretions that adhere to the walls of the blast furnace. The tongs are two 

 and a half feet long. With the same crowbar the stalactites are chipped off 

 from the copper plates from which they hang, and with the same instrument 

 the iron blocks are struck off the exhausted liquation cakes to which they 

 adhere. The refiner has performed his day's task when he has liquated the 

 silver-lead from sixteen of the large cakes and twenty of the smaller ones ; 

 if he liquates more than this, he is paid separately for it at the price for 

 extraordinary work. 



Silver, or lead mixed with silver, which we call stannum, is separated by 

 the above method from copper. This silver-lead is carried to the cupellation 

 furnace, in which lead is separated from silver ; of these methods I will 

 mention only one, because in the previous book I have explained them in 

 detail. Amongst us some years ago only forty-four centumpondia of silver- 

 lead and one of copper were melted together in the cupellation furnaces, 

 but now they melt forty-six centumpondia of silver-lead and one and a half 

 centumpondia of copper ; in other places, usually a hundred and twenty 

 centumpondia of silver-lead alloy and six of copper are melted, in which 

 manner they make about one hundred and ten centumpondia more or less of 

 litharge and thirty of hearth-lead. But in all these methods the silver which 



