46 
man, who belonged to an ala , or wing of the Norici ; it hangs by 
his side, fastened high upon his breast ; he is in the act of spearing 
a prostrate foe. The monument may be assigned to the middle of 
the third century. The long iron sword or spatha appears to have 
been in general use among the Roman auxiliaries, and even among 
the Romans themselves, towards the decline of the empire. The 
Germanic tribes used these long swords, but they were rare, the 
weapons in ordinary use being spears with a narrow, short, and 
sharp head called frame as. 
During the Roman occupation of Britain, extensive ironworks 
were carried on by them in this island, particularly in the Forest 
of Dean, or Arden, as it was then called, and in parts of Sussex 
and Kent. At all of these localities iron-scoriae of the Roman 
period abound ; Roman coins and fragments of Roman pottery are 
found intermingled throughout the entire mass. Along the banks 
of the Wye the surface soil for miles rests upon one continuous bed 
of iron cinders. For nearly 200 years the blast furnaces of the 
Dean Forest have used about one-half of the furnace burden of 
these slags or cinders, which are found advantageous to mix with 
the calcareous ores of the district. In Sussex, a bed of these 
cinders has been found no less than 20 feet deep. 
In some districts, as in Sussex, the Romans used the clay iron¬ 
stone from the beds between the chalk and oolite ; this was readily 
worked, being found near the surface, and was obtained by merely 
digging shallow pits. In other parts, as in the Forest of Dean, 
the ore is of a much richer description, and pits were sunk until 
the vein was found, which was then followed underground, 
frequently for some hundred feet. After the arrival of Adrian 
(a.d. 1 20), the fabrica, or great military forge, was established so 
near this city as Bath. 
The Romans, and probably the Britons before them, smelted 
iron much as it is even now done in parts of Asia and Africa. 
There an ore of iron capable of reduction by charcoal fuel is 
employed; from this a semifluid mass of metal is obtained, which 
is welded into the required shape. The furnace is usually of clay, 
wattled round to prevent its cracking, and a number of holes are 
left at the bottom, into which clay tubes are luted to increase the 
draught. The furnace is generally placed on an elevated situation, 
where the wind would blow freely, and goatskin bellows are used 
to aid the operation. In charging these furnaces, a quantity of 
brushwood is laid at the bottom, upon which alternate layers of 
charcoal and broken ore are piled, the charcoal being in excess. 
Even in this simple form of iron smelting a great deal of latent 
chemistry is involved, but if limited to the means at their 
command, and the ends proposed to be gained, the fullest acquaint¬ 
ance with chemistry could not improve the practice of iron 
smelting as followed by the Persians and the Hindoos. The 
ancient Peruvians seem to have been aware to a degree of the 
value of the hot blast; for they smelted their silver ill furnaces 
