IRON AND STEEL. 6 1 



era the iron mines of Elba were exhausted. Glaucus of Chios made 

 a silver cup, inlaid with iron about 560 B. C. Sophocles, 400 B. C, 

 speaks of the tempering of iron in water, and it is certain that steel 

 swords were made about the same time. The father of Demosthenes 

 made steel arms. When Xerxes invaded Greece, the Assyrians who 

 accompanied him were armed with clubs "knotted with iron." 

 Daimachus, a Greek writer of Alexander's age, mentions four kinds 

 of steel, the Chalybdic and Synopic, from which ordinary tools were 

 made ; the Lacedaemonian, from which were made files, augers, 

 chisels and stone-cutting implements, and the Lydian, which was 

 used in the manufacture of swords, razors, and surgical instru- 

 ments. Iron sickles and other agricultural implements were common 

 in the time of Alexander. 



The Romans were not workers in iron, though they encouraged 

 the industry among the peoples whom they conquered. The mines 

 of Elba, which had successfully been worked by the Phoenicians, the 

 Greeks and the Etrurians, continued their operations under Roman 

 rule ; but we do not learn that any improvements in processes of 

 manufacture were introduced. The bellows were substantially the 

 same as the blacksmith's bellows in use in our day, and the first re- 

 duction of the ore produced a small loop or bloom of spongy 

 malleable iron, which was beaten on an anvil into the shape most 

 suitable for transportation to market for the blacksmith's use. That 

 iron weapons were in use at an early day is proved by the fact that 

 king Porsenna, 500 years before our era, imposed upon the Romans 

 as a condition of peace that they should use iron for agricultural 

 implements only. The best iron brought to Rome at the beginning 

 of our era came from Noricum, corresponding to parts of Styria and 

 Carinthia, and it is believed that the mines now worked at Erzberg 

 and Huttenberg are the same that were worked twenty centuries ago. 

 The Quadi, who lived north of Noricum in what is now Moravia, 

 were then spoken of as a nation of iron workers ; and it was from 

 Moravia that, fifteen centuries later, one of the most valuable discov- 

 eries in connection with iron — that of coating it with tin — was 

 derived. 



The Spanish iron industry flourished during the Carthaginian 

 occupation, and probably before. The Romans attributed Hanni- 

 bal's success at Cannae in part to the fact that his troops were armed 



