100 Mr. J. Phillips on Ancient Metallurgy and Mining 



Upon the whole, the case is probably thus. It is the old Phoe- 

 nician trade, destroyed with Carthage, which Strabo describes, 

 and Pub. Crassus went to explore in the xavaiTtoideg. Diodorus 

 Siculus narrates the course of trade in the days of Augustus from 

 Ictis, when Gaul offered an easy route to the Mediterranean ; but 

 100 years of war and commotion interrupted this trade of Corn- 

 wall with the East, and Pliny was suspicious of the fables of 

 Greece, and knew that tin was obtained in Spain. Notwith- 

 standing this fact, it appears that Cornwall and the Asiatic Isles 

 have been the principal, almost the only sources of the tin of the 

 ancient world, that of Zinnwald being quite unknown till a much 



later date. 



Stannum is evidently an alloy of an argentine or tin-like as- 

 pect — a variable pewter — a metal more easily melted than copper, 

 for the lining of which it was much used in Pliny's days to obvi- 

 ate the danger of cupreous solutions. This process we now call 

 tinning ; and stannum,* with its variable meanings, is perhaps the 

 common parent of the French etain^ meaning as often pewter as 

 tin ; and of the German zinn which like tin in the English 

 workshops, is used sometimes for pewter when lining vessels, and 

 solder when covering surfaces which are to be joined. Our Ger- 

 man silver, Britannia metal, &c., belong to this class. The pro- 

 cess of initiation with stannum must have been well executed to 

 justify the exclamation of Pliny, that it did not augment the 

 weight of the vessel to which it was applied. The Brundisian 

 specula made of it yielded to silver, indeed, at last ; but they are 

 declared to have been of admirable efficiency. 



Stannum, then, is an alloy of tin with lead, tin with brass, tin 

 with antimony, lead with silver, or other variable mixtures of 

 metals often associated in nature. 



Pliny mentions adulterate or alloyed kinds of stannum, com- 

 posed of one part white brass to three parts of candidum plumbum ; 

 of equal weights of candidum and nigrum (which is called ar- 

 gentarium) ; of two parts of nigrum and one of candidum (called 

 tertiarum) ; with this last lead pipes are soldered.f Fraudulent 

 dealers add to the tertiarium equal parts of album, call it argen- 

 tarium, and with it plate or line other metals. 



He gives the prices of these compounds and those of pure al- 

 bum and nigrum ; the former twenty, the latter seven denarii for 

 100 lbs. 



Plumbum album, he says, is rather of an arid nature ; the ni- 

 grum is entirely humid ; " therefore the white is of no use unless 



* Pliny's notices of stannum are frequent. See Hardouin, vol. ii, 429, 22 ; 528, 7; 

 530, 30, 31, Ac. 



Stanno et sere ndxtis, 627, 11 — illitum aaneis vasis saporem gratiorem facit, 669, H 

 •discerni vix possit ab argento, 669, 26 — a?rainentis jungitur, 669, 11. 

 I- Hoc fistulas solidantur. This is the solder of our tinmen. 



