THE ART OF FOUNDING IN BRASS, COPPER AND BRONZE. 485 



The passage referred to is in the "Iliad" of Homer, in the description of 

 the manufacture of the shield of Achilles by the god Vulcan : 



Thus having said, the Father of the Fires 



To the black labor of his forge retires. 



Soon as he bade them blow, the bellows turned 



Their own mouths; and where the furnace burned 



Resounding breathed ; at once the blast expires, 



And twenty forges catch at once the fires. 



Just as the god directs ; now loud, now low, 



They raise a tempest or they gently blow. 



In hissing flames huge silver bars are rolled, 



And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold. 



Thus the broad shield complete, the artist crowned 

 With his last hand, and poured the ocean round ; 

 In living silver seemed the waves to roll; 

 And beat the buckler's verge and bound the whole. 



In this description of the casting, Homer uses the word Chalkds, so that we 

 can scarcely tell whether he means copper pure or alloyed. Further, it is more 

 difficult when we read of the mythical Dactyles of Ida in Crete, or the Cyclops, 

 being acquainted with the melting of Chalkds. It is not, however, likely, that 

 the later Greek writers, who knew bronze in its real sense, would have used the 

 word Chalkds without qualifications to describe objects which they had seen, un- 

 less they meant it to be taken as bronze. 



Pausanias speaks of an old statue he had seen, made of separate pieces of 

 metal fastened together with nails, and, using the same word, we understand him 

 to mean bronze, as there exist very early figures of bronze thus made. We read 

 also of the process called "sphyrelaton," being to hammer out the plates and 

 fasten them together with nails. Pausanias also tells that "the Phoenicians pre- 

 tended that Ulysses dedicated a statue of bronze to Neptune Hippius," but adds 

 that '' he does not give credit to the statement, as the art of fusing the metals and 

 casting them in a mold was not then known," " In fact, the first who cast 

 statues were Theodorus and Rhsecus, both natives of Samos." 



It has been generally thought that their merit consisted in casting the statues 

 with an inner core, which could be afterward removed, leaving the castings light, 

 and therefore less costly. But this is open to question, as we have before seen 

 from Assyrian bronzes having been found cast with an inner core of a date older 

 than Theodorus and Rhaecus, and there is now in the British Museum an early 

 Etruscan statuette from Sissa, on the Volturno, with a core of iron. 



The Samians were very early noted for their skill in this branch of art, and 

 before the foundation of Cyrene, b. c. 630, they made a bronze vase ornamented 

 with griffins, supported on three colossal figures of bronze, for the Temple of 

 Juno. 



