IV. INDUSTRY: SMITHS, CUTLERS, ARMOURERS, THE ART OF MINING, CHARCOAL-MAKING, ETC

IV. INDUSTRY: SMITHS, CUTLERS, ARMOURERS, THE ART OF MINING, CHARCOAL-MAKING, ETC

The earliest smiths[863] in Greece wrought not in iron but in brass, of which, at first, both arms and domestic implements were fashioned. In Mexico and Peru, where, likewise, copper[864] was known before iron, they possessed the art of hardening it to so great a degree, that it would even cut stones and the closest-grained wood. The same or a similar process was known to the ancients, and might still, perhaps, be easily recovered were it any longer an object to be desired. The Greeks always retained a strong partiality for articles of brass, copper, and bronze, and besides statues,[865] pillars,[866] and trees, where the fruit was sometimes of gold,[867] employed them in cups, urns, vases, and caldrons, with covers of the same metal.[868] We also find mention made of brazen mangers, and even maps.[869]

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Footnote 863:

Cf. Il. ξ. 48. Magii, Var. Lect. p. 130. 1.

Footnote 864:

The hardness, however, would appear to have been produced partly by the interfusion of different metals, partly by the liquid in which the implements were quenched. Ulloa, Mémoires Philosophiques, &c., t. ii. p. 90. 94. Observations, p. 468. Cf. Voyages, t. i. p. 384.

Footnote 865:

Plut. Philop. § 8.

Footnote 866:

Thucyd. v. 47.

Footnote 867:

It is related of the bronze palm-tree at Delphi with fruit of gold, that the dates were imitated so exactly, that they were pecked at and destroyed by the crows: Ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς Παλλάδιον ἕστηκε χρυσοῦν, ἐπὶ φοίνικος χαλκοῦ βεβηκὸς, ἀνάθημα τῆς πόλεως ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἀριστείων. Τοῦτ᾽ ἔκοπτον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς προσπετόμενοι κόρακες, καὶ τὸν καρπὸν ὄντα χρυσοῦν τοῦ φοίνικος ἀπέτρωγον καὶ κατέβαλλον. Plut. Nic. § 8.

Footnote 868:

Herod. i. 48. iv. 81. 70. The extraordinary forms sometimes assumed by these vases are in part mentioned by Pollux, who, in describing the προσωποῦττα says, it was a vessel expanding above into the mouth of an ox, or the jaws of a lion. Onomast. ii. 48. In the Royal Prussian Museum there is found a vase, the mouth of which represents that of a griffin. Racolta de’ Monumenti più Interressanti del Real Museo Borbonico, e di varie Collezioni private, Publicati da Raffaele Gargiulo, Napoli, 1825, No. 113. See in the same collection a variety of other vases representing the faces of Hermes, the heads of dragons, hippogriffs, wild boars, &c. No. 75, sqq.

Footnote 869:

Herod. ix. 70. v. 49.

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With tin, also, the Greeks, even in the Homeric age, were acquainted;[870] and, among other uses which they, in later ages, made of it, was that of lining the inside of their cooking utensils.[871]

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Footnote 870:

Il. σ. 565. φ. 592. ψ. 561.

Footnote 871:

Beckmann, History of Inventions, iv. 13.

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At a period beyond the reach of history they obtained a knowledge of the use of both iron[872] and steel, the invention of which they attributed to Hephaistos.[873] Homer, who speaks of axes and other implements of steel, or, rather, of iron steeled at the edge, describes the process of forming it by immersion in cold water.[874] In the manufacture of the Homeric swords steel only would appear to have been, in most cases, employed, since they were extremely brittle, and often shivered to pieces by a mere blow upon shield or helmet. To guard against this effect the superior and more delicate articles were, in later times, cooled not in water but in oil.[875] The Spartans, we are told, quenched their iron money in vinegar which rendered it, they supposed, brittle and unmalleable, consequently of no value but as a token.[876]

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Footnote 872:

Palæphat. Fragm. ap. Gal. Opusc. Mythol. &c. p. 64, sqq.

Footnote 873:

Il. δ. 487.

Footnote 874:

Odyss. ι. 391.

Footnote 875:

Tenuiora ferramenta oleo restingui mos est, ne aqua in fragilitatem durentur. Plin. xxxiv. 41.

Footnote 876:

Plut. Lycurgus, § 9.

Among the earliest nations who excelled in the smelting of iron and the manufacture of steel were the Chalybes,[877] who are said to have collected the ore from the beds of their rivers, and to have mingled therewith a certain quantity of the mineral pyrimachos. Aristotle, in describing the process of smelting, observes, that steel, in passing through the furnace, not only diminishes in quantity but in specific gravity also, that is to say, becomes less valuable. It was one merit of the Chalybean steel that it was not liable to rust. The method of preparing this metal which prevailed among the Celtiberians was this:[878] they buried a number of iron plates in the earth, where they suffered them to remain until the greater portion was converted into rust.[879] They then drew them forth and wrought them into various kinds of weapons, particularly swordblades, which were so keen that neither shields, nor helmets, nor sculls, were able to resist their edge. To this the complimentary Plutarch likens the language of the Spartans.[880]

Footnote 877:

Justin. xliv. 4. Plin. vi. 4. 34. vii. 57. viii. 82.

Footnote 878:

Diodor. Sicul. v. 33. Suid. v. μάχαιρα. t. ii. p. 108. c.

Footnote 879:

Aristot. de Mirab. t. xvi. p. 187. Meteorol. iv. 6. p. 119, seq.

Footnote 880:

Καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ Κελτίβηρες ἐκ τοῦ σιδήρου τὸ στόμωμα ποιοῦσιν, ὅταν κατορύξαντες εἰς τὴν γὴν τὸ πολὺ καὶ τὸ γεῶδες ἀποκαθᾴρωσιν, οὕτως ὁ Λακωνικὸς λόγος οὐκ ἔχει φλοιὸν, ἀλλ’ εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ δραστήριον ἀφαιρέσει τοῦ περιττοῦ διωκόμενος στομοῦται. De Garrulitat. § 17.

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It was thought of much importance by the ancients to select for the quenching of steel water possessing certain occult qualities, whose existence was only to be detected by experiment. By these the river of the Chalybeans was thought to be distinguished,[881] as well as the waters near Como, at Calatayud and Tarragona in Spain. Water has, likewise, been prepared, by a variety of infusions, for communicating a finer temper and greater hardness to steel, an example of which is mentioned in the history of the Duke Cosmo, who invented, according to Vasari,[882] a liquid wherein were hardened the tools with which Francesco del Tadda was enabled to cut a fountain-basin, and several other articles, from a block of the hardest porphyry. Nothing, however, was more common than this operation among the ancients, both Greeks and Egyptians, by whom porphyry was cut into every variety of form, and invested with the highest polish.[883]

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Footnote 881:

Plin. xxxiv. 41.

Footnote 882:

Vit. de Pitt. Pref. p. 12. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, ii. 78.

Footnote 883:

Winkelm. Hist. de l’Art, t. i. p. 176, sqq.

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The best steel appears to have been obtained from the Seres, from Parthia, and from India,[884] where, when polished, it assumed the bright appearance of silver, and probably like that of Damascus contained a small proportion of this metal. That which came from Sinope and the Chalybes served for the manufacture of ordinary tools; the Laconian[885] was wrought into files, augers, chisels, and the other implements of stone-cutters; the Lydian stood in high estimation with the sword-cutlers, and the manufacturers of razors and surgical instruments.[886] The locks and keys[887] of the ancients, if we may judge from the specimens found at Pompeii, were of a somewhat rude construction, though probably manufactured of the best iron.

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Footnote 884:

Plin. xxxiv. 41.

Footnote 885:

Eustath. ad Il. β. p. 222. Cf. Herod. vii. 61. i. 164. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 620. Nub. 179.

Footnote 886:

Eustath. ad Il. β. p. 222. 28, sqq. Steph. de Urb. v. Λακεδαίμων. p. 505, c. seq.

Footnote 887:

Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 155. 200, seq. Poll. i. 77. Eurip. Orest. 1577. Æsch. Sept. 378. Schol. Thucyd. l. ii. t. v. p. 371. Iliad. δ. 132. μ. 121.

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The workshop and tools of the smith bore the closest possible resemblance to those of the present day; the bellows[888] consisting of thin boards connected by flaps of cow-hide, and having a snout of iron, the anvil mounted on a high block, the hammer, the tongs, the vice, which require no particular description.

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Footnote 888:

Herod. i. 68. Athen. iii. 71. xiv. 57. Sch. Aristoph. Ach. 853. Poll. x. 45.

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Respecting the quality of Grecian cutlery it must be acknowledged that our information is exceedingly scanty, though we may reasonably infer, that it often possessed the greatest excellence and beauty from the perfection to which they had undoubtedly brought the manufacture of arms. In this branch of industry the Delphians would seem to have obtained celebrity, though the form and uses of their knives, alluded to in a comparison by Aristotle,[889] can be looked upon only as matter of conjecture. It seems to me, that, like Hudibras’ dagger, they would serve for a variety of purposes, as a poignard for example, as a sacrificial instrument, and as a common knife:

When it had stabbed, or broke a head, It would scrape trenchers or chip bread, Toast cheese or bacon, though it were To bait a mousetrap ’twould not care.

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Footnote 889:

Polit. i. 1.

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There was a very elegant sort of knives among the Athenians, adorned with ivory handles, delicately carved with the figures of animals, among which was that of a crouching lioness.[890] For this purpose the ivory was frequently stained of different colours, as pink, or crimson, or purple, according to the fancy of the workman. Knife-handles were sometimes also made of the roots of the lotos,[891] which, no doubt, took a fine polish and were beautifully clouded. Their scissors, bodkins, sailmakers’ needles, common needles, pins,[892] and other articles of this description, would seem to have been manufactured with much neatness.

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Footnote 890:

Schol. Aristoph. Lysist. 231.

Footnote 891:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 3. 3.

Footnote 892:

Poll. ii. 37.

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But the most flourishing trade in Greece was probably that of the armourer,[893] which, at almost every period of her history, was in constant request. Many, probably, of the useful arts owed much of the progress they made to the passion of the Greeks for arms, which led them industriously to study and invent whatever could add to their splendour or efficiency. We need not now go back to the times when sticks and stones and pointed reeds formed the national weapons.[894] Among the very first steps in civilisation were improvements in the art of self-defence; for, wherever men have found it necessary to create property, they have felt it to be equally so to invent weapons for protecting themselves in the enjoyment of it. Accordingly the Greeks, long before the birth of history, had surrounded themselves by numerous instruments of destruction, and learned to cover their bodies with armour infinitely varied in materials and workmanship.

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Footnote 893:

See an elegant representation of a columnar anvil which we may infer was used by armourers. Gemme Antiche, Figurate di Leonardo Agostini, pt. ii. tav. 36.

Footnote 894:

Goguet. i. 165.

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Upon none of their weapons, however, did they bestow greater attention than on the sword, which if it did not, as among certain barbarians, constitute one of the objects of their worship,[895] was in most cases their inseparable companion through life, and descended with them even to the grave. Thus we find, that, when Cimon opened, at Scyros, the grave of Theseus, the national hero of Attica, he found beside the skeleton a spearhead and sword of brass.[896] Their blades were of many different shapes and dimensions: they had the long, sharp, double-edged rapier; the short cut and thrust; the crooked scimitar, the sabre, and the broad-sword.[897] These were generally of the finest steel, highly polished, and sometimes damaskened exactly like those blades afterwards manufactured at Damascus. The sheath was sometimes of ivory, sometimes of gold or silver or tin or other inferior metal.[898] To the first-mentioned substance we have an allusion in a saying of Diogenes, who on hearing a handsome young man make use of low language, exclaimed: “How shameless! to draw forth a sword of lead from a sheath of ivory.”[899] The hilts were often extremely superb, of costly materials, and wrought in the most fanciful shapes. We read, for example, of sword-handles studded or inlaid with gold, or even composed entirely of that metal, or of silver.[900] Ivory too, and amber,[901] and terebinth,[902] polished and black as ebony, and a variety of other woods and substances, stained black with nut-gall,[903] were employed for this purpose. The father of Demosthenes, who kept a large manufactory of arms, left behind him a considerable quantity of ivory and gall-nuts[904] which he had purchased as well for his own use as to supply other armourers in a smaller way. Of daggers there were various kinds, some of a larger size, worn suspended on the thigh with the sword, as the hunting knife was by the Persian youth; others much smaller, which seem to have been carried about concealed under the armpit, as is still the fashion in the East. To this practice Socrates alludes in his conversation with Polos of Agrigentum,[905] on the power possessed in states by tyrants, whom he compares to one who should go forth into the marketplace with an enchiridion concealed about him, and for that reason fancy it in his power to take away every man’s life, because he could undoubtedly kill any one he pleased.

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Footnote 895:

Thus, speaking of the Alani, Ammianus Marcellinus relates: Nec templum apud eos visitur, aut delubrum ne tugurium quidem culmo tectum cerni usquam potest: sed gladius barbarico ritu humi figitur nudus, eúmque ut Martem, regionum quas circumcircant præsulem verecundiùs colunt. l. xxxi. c. 2. p. 673. Ed. Gronov. 1693. Pomp. Mel. ii. 1. In Justin too, we find relics of the worship paid of old to arms: Ab origine rerum, pro diis immortalibus veteres hastas coluêre. xliii. 3. At Chæronea in Bœotia there subsisted, down to very late times, the worship of a sceptre on which they bestowed the name of the Spear. Θεῶν δὲ μάλιστα Χαιρωνεῖς τιμῶσι τὸ σκῆπτρον ὃ ποιῆσαι Διί φησιν Ὅμηρος Ἥφαιστον, παρὰ δὲ Διὸς λαβόντα Ἑρμῆν δοῦναι Πέλοπι, Πέλοπα δὲ Ἀτρεί καταλιπεῖν, τὸν δὲ Ἀτρεά Θυέστῃ, παρὰ Θυέστου δὲ ἔχειν Ἀγαμέμνονα· τοῦτο οὖν τὸ σκῆπτρον σέβουσι, δόρυ ὀνομάζοντες. Pausan. ix. 40. 11.

Footnote 896:

Plut. Thes. § 36. The practice of burying weapons with the dead prevailed also down to a very late period among the Romans; for in a stone coffin of Imperial times recently discovered at Héronval in Normandy, a sword was found by the warrior’s side, together with a stylus, a buckler, rings, and other ornaments. Times, June 17, 1842.

Footnote 897:

Pollux makes mention of the Celtic broadsword. i. 149.

Footnote 898:

Winkel. Hist. del’ Art. i. 34.

Footnote 899:

Diog. Laert. vi. 2. 65.

Footnote 900:

Poll. x. 141. 144. Damm. Lexicon, 395.

Footnote 901:

Eustath. ad Odyss. δ. 150. 16.

Footnote 902:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 3. 2.

Footnote 903:

On the production of the gall-nut, see Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 5. 2, and Cf. Valmont de Bomare Dict. d’Hist. Nat. t. iii. p. 8.

Footnote 904:

Demosth. in Aphob. § 4. 8.

Footnote 905:

Plat. Gorg. t. iii. p. 50.

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Next in importance perhaps was the manufacture of javelins and spears.[906] Of the former, the heads,[907] light though sometimes broad, were mounted on slender ashen shafts shod with iron, or on the long Cretan reed[908] which abounded in the marshes about Haliartos in Bœotia. These javelins, in more modern times, were furnished with a looped thong, by which when the darter had missed his aim, they could be drawn back.[909] The best kind were supposed to be manufactured in Bœotia. Spear-shafts were likewise sometimes of ash,[910] but more frequently of cornel wood,[911] and occasionally, as in the case of the Macedonian sarissa, eighteen feet long. Like the javelin, the spear also was shod sharp with iron, in order the more easily to be fixed upright in the earth, when soldiers slept abroad in the fields.[912] This part of the iron-work, which was hollow and received the shaft into it, is said to have been shaped like a lizard, doubtless represented as holding the point of the handle in its mouth. Projections resembling legs extended on both sides, designed to prevent the spear from sinking too deep into the ground. In the lances of the cavalry there was, as some suppose, a small notch to receive the point of the horseman’s foot when mounting his steed. The spear-head, generally of iron or steel, was among the Arab allies of Xerxes formed of goat’s horn, fashioned like the iron of a lance.[913]

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Footnote 906:

Poll. i. 143.

Footnote 907:

Spearheads were sometimes poisoned with the juice of the dorycnion. Plin. xxi. 81.

Footnote 908:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 13. Plut. Lysand. § 28. Dioscor. i. 94.

Footnote 909:

Poll. i. 136. x. 143.

Footnote 910:

Sibthorp. Flora Græca, tab. 4.

Footnote 911:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 12. 1, seq.

Footnote 912:

Poll. i. 136. x. 143.

Footnote 913:

Herod. vii. 69.

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The bows[914] of the ancients were most commonly composed of horn, tipped with gold or other metal at either end. Among the barbarous nations there were those who manufactured them of cane or palm-branches, or even of the long stem of the date.[915] The bowstring was of thong or horse-hair. Reeds generally constituted the shafts of their arrows,[916] which were headed with iron or copper, or hard pointed stones, as those of the Arabs in the army of Xerxes, who employed for this purpose the same stones wherewith they engraved their seals.[917] Arrows were frequently winged with eagles’ feathers, and tinged at the point with poison.[918] In sieges they were often armed with fire.[919]

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Footnote 914:

On the Scythian bow, see Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 15; on the Cretan, Poll. i. 45. 149; on arrows, Athen. x. 18.

Footnote 915:

Poll. i. 244. Herod. vii. 64, 65. 69.

Footnote 916:

Herod. vii. 61. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 11. Dioscor. i. 114. The Parthian kings, we are told, addicted themselves with pride to the forging and sharpening of arrow-heads: it may be presumed, because the bow was the national weapon of their country. Plut. Demet. § 20. The arrow-heads of the Indians were of unusually large dimensions. Plut. Alexand. § 63. That the arrow-heads of the ancient Scythians were of bronze appears from the following relation of Herodotus. Ariantas, a king of Scythia, desirous of ascertaining the number of his subjects, commanded them, on pain of death, to bring him each an arrow-head. His people obeyed the order; and when he had satisfied himself respecting their number, he ordered a huge vessel to be cast with the bronze, which, in the age of the Father of History, still existed at a place called Exampæos, between the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. It was six inches thick, and contained six hundred amphoræ. iv. 81.

Footnote 917:

Herod. vii. 69.

Footnote 918:

Phot. Bib. 445. 21. Poll. i. 138.

Footnote 919:

Poll. i. 42.

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Besides the above, there were several other implements of destruction. The Greeks made use of the club, the battle-axe, and the sling.[920] And a tribe of barbarians, once mentioned in history, depended entirely on their daggers, and a noosed rope of twisted thongs,[921] which they used for entangling and overthrowing man or horse, much in the same manner as the lasso is now employed in the Pampas of South America.

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Footnote 920:

Id. i. 149. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 181.

Footnote 921:

Poll. ii. 30. Herod. vii. 85.

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If we turn now to their armour, we shall find that they displayed in its manufacture the greatest possible skill, taste, and ingenuity. Their helmets, cuirasses, shields, cuisses, and greaves, were made of polished steel, or brass, or tin, sometimes curiously figured, and inlaid with metals of many different colours, and polished to an exceeding brightness,[922] sometimes adorned with representations in relief. Frequently they went cased in shirts of mail, composed of innumerable small metallic plates, lapping over each other so as to resemble the scales of fishes. Occasionally the opulent appeared on the field of battle in golden armour,[923] though this piece of ostentation was chiefly confined to the barbarians.[924] The armourers’ craft, however, seems to have gone on improving in proportion as the courage of the nation deteriorated, until at length, in Macedonian times, armour of enormous weight, and, literally, impenetrable, came into use. Thus Zoilos manufactured for Demetrios Poliorcetes two coats-of-mail,[925] of a steel so hard, that the surface could scarcely be grazed by an arrow discharged from a catapult. The whole suit weighed no less than one hundred and thirty pounds, exactly twice as much as an ordinary suit of armour.

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Footnote 922:

Herod. ix. 21. i. 15.

Footnote 923:

Id. i. 215.

Footnote 924:

On one occasion we find the magistrates of Thessaly coming forth with panoply of gold to meet the ashes of Pelopidas. Ἐκ δὲ τῶν πόλεων, ὡς ἀπηγγέλθη ταῦτα, παρῆσαν αἵ τ᾽ ἀρχαι, καὶ μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ἔφηβοι καὶ παῖδες καὶ ἱερεῖς, πρὸς τὴν ὑποδοκὴν τοῦ σώματος, τρόπαια καὶ στεφάνους καὶ πανοπλίας χρυσᾶς ἐπιφέροντες. Plut. Pelopid. § 33.

Footnote 925:

Plut. Demet. § 21.

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Helmets[926] were manufactured of numerous materials. First, in the ruder ages, they were in reality nothing more than so many close skull-caps made of the skins[927] of otters or water-dogs, with the hair on,[928] or foxes, or weasels, or goats, or bulls, or lions. But as the arts of civilisation improved, metal casques were soon substituted for these primitive defences, some of which, of wrought steel, were highly polished, and shone like burnished silver. That of Alexander was manufactured by Theophilos.[929] The helmet consisted of a variety of parts: as, first, the casque itself, inlaid with brass and iron,[930] which enclosed and defended the head, the front brim projecting over the forehead; the vizor, which dropped over the whole face; the strap, often richly embroidered or studded with jewels,[931] passing under the chin; and the ridge, or cone, on the summit, from which rose the plumes, or crest.[932] This crest, double, treble, or even quadruple, according to the taste or fancy of the wearer, sometimes consisted of long drooping ostrich feathers,[933] sometimes of horse-hair, either black or dyed of different colours, which, trembling and floating over the warrior’s head, appeared to augment his stature while it added to the terror of his aspect. King Pyrrhos, we are told, wore upon his helmet the horns of a goat, symbolical of the power of Macedon;[934] and the Asiatic Thracians flanked their crests with the horns and ears of an ox in brass.[935] To break the force of blows from clubs or heavy battle-axes, the crown of the helmet was thickly lined with sponge or soft wool.[936] Mention is likewise made of helmets of plaited cord of wood and leather,[937] and the skins of horses’ heads, retaining the ears and the mane.[938]

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Footnote 926:

Poll. i. 148, seq. Herod. i. 171. Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 40. Feith, Antiquitat. Homer. iv. 8. p. 316, seq.

Footnote 927:

Goguet, Orig. des Loix, iv. 322.

Footnote 928:

Herod. vii. 75.

Footnote 929:

Plut. Alex. 32.

Footnote 930:

Herod. vii. 84.

Footnote 931:

Plut. Alex. § 32.

Footnote 932:

Cf. Poll. i. 135. Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 1188. 389. Plut. Alexand. § 16. The close helmets, without crests, were sometimes ornamented with feathers, much after the Indian fashion. Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 42.

Footnote 933:

Plin. Nat. Hist. x. 1. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 4. 5.

Footnote 934:

Plut. Pyrrh. § 11.

Footnote 935:

Herod. vii. 76.

Footnote 936:

Brunck. not. in Aristoph. Acharn. 439.

Footnote 937:

Herod. vii. 77. 79. 89.

Footnote 938:

Id. vii. 70.

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In the manufacture of corslets and cuirasses[939] much industry and ability was exhibited. The former were generally composed of linen or hempen twine curiously wrought, and doubled or trebled according to the desire of the purchaser,[940] and worn chiefly in the chase;[941] others consisted of thick leathern jerkins, covered with metallic scales,[942] single, double, or treble, and fastened to each other by a series of hooks. In lieu of these plates was sometimes substituted a coating of intertwisted rings, resembling in some respects the chain armour of a later age. Wooden cuirasses were also sometimes worn.[943] The Sarmatians[944] possessing no iron, headed their darts and javelins with bone, and employed very extraordinary materials in the manufacture of their cuirasses. Collecting carefully all the hoofs of such horses as died, they cut them into laminæ, resembling in form the scales of a fish. These they sewed together with the nerves of horses or oxen, and thus produced a species of breastplate which for elegance and utility was scarcely inferior to those of the Greeks. In the manufacture of linen corslets[945] the Egyptians displayed peculiar excellence, at least the description of one of them which history has preserved is calculated to create a very high idea of their ingenuity. It was curiously wrought, we are told, with fine bobbins, each composed of three hundred and sixty threads, distinctly visible, adorned with numerous figures of animals interwoven with cotton and gold.[946] Among the Greeks this piece of armour was often richly embroidered by the ladies of the warrior’s family, whom, on more than one occasion, we find busy at this task on the eve of battle. The cuirasses of brass or steel were finely polished and buttoned under the arm. Even the horses were furnished with breastplates and frontlets,[947] and occasionally their flanks also were protected by armour. The warrior’s greaves[948] were manufactured of copper, brass, tin, or other metal, and fastened about the legs with silver buttons. Archers seem commonly to have worn a species of gloves or fingerlings.[949]

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Footnote 939:

Poll. i. 148, seq.

Footnote 940:

Cf. Herod. vii. 89.

Footnote 941:

Paus. i. 21. 7. vi. 19. 7.

Footnote 942:

Cf. Paus. ix. 26. 8.

Footnote 943:

Etym. Mag. 288. 48.

Footnote 944:

Paus. i. 21. 6.

Footnote 945:

Cf. Herod. ii. 182.

Footnote 946:

Herod. iii. 47. Plin. xix. 1. Ælian. Hist. An. ix. 17. Plut. Alex. § 32.

Footnote 947:

Poll. ii. 162. 167.

Footnote 948:

Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 38, where we find representations of battle-axes, quivers, bows, swords, etc.

Footnote 949:

Constant. Lexic. v. χειρίδες.

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The manufacture of shields[950] underwent great fluctuations at different periods of Grecian history, and even in the same age there existed numerous and extraordinary differences in their materials, form, and structure. In early times they consisted simply of a piece of circular basket-work, plaited for the sake of lightness with vine-branches[951] or willows; or were made of a solid piece of wood scooped into the proper form, and covered with one or more coats of leather. The wood usually preferred for this use was that of the elder, the beach, the poplar, and the fig; and the leather was generally tough bull-hide,[952] with or without the hair, though we read of nations, as the Ethiopians, who made use for this purpose of the skins of cranes.[953] The same people at the present day have discovered that the hide of the crocodile, dressed with the scales on, forms a better integument for their bucklers. Among the Homeric heroes the wooden framework was protected by many folds of leather, amounting sometimes to seven, to which were added plates of brass, silver, gold, or tin. Even when the face of the shield was composed of some inferior metal, the rim seems frequently to have been of gold.

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Footnote 950:

Poll. i. 148, seq.

Footnote 951:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 3. 4. v. 7. 7. Thucyd. iv. 9.

Footnote 952:

Herod. vii. 79.

Footnote 953:

Id. vii. 70.

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In later times shields were usually manufactured of brass or steel, wrought and fashioned with the greatest care, and polished like a mirror. Occasionally, likewise, they were inlaid with purple, ivory, and gold,[954] or painted white, or crusted with gold and silver, as among the Samnites.[955] From the remotest antiquity, moreover, it was customary to paint upon shields a number of devices, each warrior selecting one for himself,[956] which, like the armorial bearings of the knights of chivalry, distinguished him from his comrades in battle. Thus Perseus chose the head of the Gorgon Medusa;[957] Tydeus the aspect of the face of the mighty heavens, including the full moon, surrounded by flaming stars;[958] Eteocles bore before him the figure of a warrior scaling a lofty tower, while Hippomedon selected, as the emblem of his character, the figure of Typhœos breathing forth fire and smoke. Every reader will remember the varied imagery that crowded the shield of the Homeric Achilles, together with the scenes which Hesiod, in imitation, depicts on the buckler of Heracles. In the historical period[959] the people of Sicyon had a sigma, the initial letter in the name of their capital, painted on their shields.[960] These ornaments, as well as the handles, it is said, owed their origin to the invention of the Carians. The form of the shield exhibited much variety. One kind, for example, was small and circular,[961] another oblong or parallelogrammatic, and of dimensions so large as to cover the whole body, and allow the fallen warrior to be borne home on it as upon a bier; others were rhomboidal,[962] or semilunar, or shaped like an ivy-leaf. But whatever may have been their figure, there always projected from the centre of the external face a large boss, with a smaller one, generally pointed, on the middle of it. This the soldiers dashed in the countenances of the enemy. Within, two bars, stretching from rim to rim, and crossing each other like the letter X, gave the warrior, who passed his left arm behind them, greater power over his defence, while a smaller handle, on the fore part of the shield, received his grasp.[963] Occasionally, the place of these bars was supplied by metallic or wooden handles, exactly of a size to receive the arm; and, by means of a leathern strap, the buckler, when marching, was usually suspended on the shoulder.[964] In time of peace both the shield and the helmet were laid up, each in its appropriate case.[965] Besides the manufacturers of arms, who supplied states with large orders, there were numerous armourers on a smaller scale,[966] whose shops exhibited a rich and varied assortment of shields, helmets, and every kind of weapon.

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Footnote 954:

Poll. i. 134.

Footnote 955:

Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, i. 276.

Footnote 956:

Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 548.

Footnote 957:

Epaminondas had a dragon on his shield as a device. Pausan. viii. 11. 8.

Footnote 958:

Sept. Cont. Theb. 367. 447. 471.

Footnote 959:

The device of Demosthenes was, “To Good Fortune.” Plut. Demosth. § 20.

Footnote 960:

Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 4. 10. It has been conjectured, that the Arcadian allies of Epaminondas painted the letter Θ on their shields, that they might appear to be transformed into Thebans. Schneid. ad Xen. Hellen. vii. 5. 20. The Lacedæmonians painted the letter Λ on their shields. Meurs. Miscell. Lacon. i. 18.

Footnote 961:

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 18.

Footnote 962:

Petit. de Amazon. xxv. 169.

Footnote 963:

Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 645. Acharn. 1087. From certain ancient monuments it appears, that a small thin cushion ran along behind the arm on the interior of the shield. Giton. Il Costume, tav. 39. Cf. Zoëga, Bassi Rilievi, tav. 47, for the figure of Capaneus advancing his shield as if in combat.

Footnote 964:

Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 846. 855.

Footnote 965:

Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 548.

Footnote 966:

Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 439.

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The metals employed in the fabrication of arms were obtained partly from mines found in Greece itself, partly by commerce from the surrounding countries.[967] On the methods of mining which prevailed among the Greeks our information is peculiarly scanty. We know, however, that, at Laurion,[968] the Athenians made use of both shafts and adits, and that in chambering they employed much timber.[969] To prevent the falling in of the superincumbent mountain there were left at intervals vast pillars,[970] the cutting away of which was by law prohibited on pain of death. In the potter’s-clay mines of Samos, where the veins, running generally between beds of rock, were exceedingly shallow, seldom exceeding two feet in depth, the miners, as in the thin veins of our own coal mines, were compelled while at work to lie on their back or sides, which, it may be presumed, was the practice in other mines under similar circumstances. Whether they possessed any means of protecting themselves against the fire-damps or malaria,[971] which, we know, prevailed greatly at Laurion,[972] is a matter of much uncertainty. In Spain, the mines ran deep into the earth, and were of prodigious extent, having transverse passages and caverns of great dimensions and elevation.

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Footnote 967:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 21. Herod. v. 17. vi. 46. vii. 112. Thucyd. i. 101. Plut. Cim. § 14.

Footnote 968:

On the price of mining shares, Dem. adv. Pantæn. § 6. Schol. Eq. 1089.

Footnote 969:

Cf. Petit, Legg. Att. vii. 12. p. 543.

Footnote 970:

Μεσοκρινεῖς κίονες, οἱ ἐν τοῖς μετάλλοις ὑφεστηκότες ἀνέχειν τὰ ὀρύγματα. Poll. vii. 98.

Footnote 971:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 52.

Footnote 972:

Λέγεται βαρὺ τὸ χωρίον εἶναι. Xenoph. Memor. iii. 6. 12.

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In an old shaft discovered in the mountains of Santo Spirito,[973] the sides were supported by masonry; large pools of water were found in some of the chambers, while the explorers could hear afar off the incessant roar of waterfalls. Here and there the passages were nearly blocked up by masses of gold and silver ore.[974]

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Footnote 973:

The mountain districts of Spain, in which the mines were situated, are described by Pliny to be so utterly barren, that they produce nothing but ore. Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 21.

Footnote 974:

“Times,” March 24, 1841.

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How the water was drained off, or the ore brought to the surface of the earth, no ancient author has explained. When extracted, however, it was pounded in a stone mortar with an iron pestle, then passed through a sieve, and transferred to the smelting furnace.[975]

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Footnote 975:

Vitruv. vii. 7. Demosth. in Pantænet. § 6. Harpocrat. v. κεγκρεὼν. Suid. t. i. p. 1428. a.

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The account transmitted to us of the gold mines of Egypt may probably throw some light on the practice which prevailed among the Greeks. In them we find an almost exact type of the degrading toil and disregard of danger and decency recently brought to light among our own subterranean population. There, indeed, the workmen were forced to their task by the direct compulsion of a tyrannical government; while in Great Britain the constraint is enveloped by a cloud of circumstances which conceal, though they scarcely soften, the stern laws of necessity.

The Egyptian gold mines were situated in the great eastern desert, on the shores of the Red Sea. They had been worked from the remotest antiquity; in proof of which it is related, that copper pickaxes were frequently found in the deserted shafts and galleries, beside incredible heaps of human bones, relics of the multitudes who had perished there by malaria, or fire-damps, or the falling of rocks, or more probably from the incessant oppression to which they were subjected.[976] In fact the benevolent historian,[977] to whom we are indebted for nearly all we know on this curious subject, felt so strongly for the sufferings of these wretched artificers of Egyptian grandeur, that he pronounced death in their case to be more desirable than life.[978] But the most miserable possess resources and springs of gratification unknown to philosophers and the professors of literature; and, we may be sure, that even those outcasts who brought up gold from the bowels of the earth to adorn the thrones and palaces of the Pharaohs, knew how to extract from their bitter employment some few sweets of sufficient efficacy to render life endurable.

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Footnote 976:

The same excessive waste of human life has been observable in all countries where mines have been worked on a large scale: “Juan Gonzales de Alzevedo assuroit en 1609, que le nombre des indigènes étoit diminué de moitié dans les environs des mines du Pérou, et d’un tiers en d’autres endroits, depuis 1581.” Schneider, Observations sur Ulloa, t. ii. p. 264.

Footnote 977:

Agatharchid. ap. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 250. p. 447. a. sqq.

Footnote 978:

Οὗτοι πάντες οἱ τὸν εἰρημένον τῆς τύχης κλῆρον ὑπελθόντες ποθεινότερον ἔχουσι τοῦ βίου τὸν θάνατον. Id. p. 448. a. 38.

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No doubt the processes of those early times were sufficiently rude. When about to open a new shaft or adit the Inspectors of the mines appear carefully to have examined the different faces of the mountain, sombre, scarped, and barren to the last degree; and having fixed upon a spot in the face of some cliff, the first operation was to render the rock friable by the application of powerful fires, which were kindled with wood at its base. The more robust of the workmen then proceeded with their pickaxes to the excavation of the galleries, which seldom or never proceeded in a right line; but following the direction of the metallic veins, mounted, descended, branched off obliquely to the left or to the right; and progressing in this manner, sometimes perforated the whole bulk of the mountain, and striking downwards, like the roots of trees, extended even to the sea.[979] The men employed in getting the ore, followed incessantly by task-masters with instruments of chastisement in their hands, were seldom permitted to proportion their exertions to their strength; but often toiled on apparently till they dropped, when their bones joined the heaps of those who had fallen before them. While thus engaged, more especially when united in great numbers they had clambered the rocks to a considerable height, they presented an extraordinary spectacle; for each miner[980] carried a lamp bound to his forehead, though how, when they bent or kneeled, or worked sideways, it escaped being extinguished seems difficult of explanation.

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Footnote 979:

Similar excavations in the mountain of Potosi are thus described by Don Antonio d’Ulloa: “Le mont du Potosi doit être considéré comme l’intérieur d’ une ruche à miel, vu le nombre des percemens, des galeries, des fouilles qu’on y remarque. C’est ce qu’on se figurera facilement, en se répresentant la quantité prodigieuse de matières qu’on a tirées de son intérieur, pour obtener les minérais qui s’y trouvent répandus partout, et desquels on extrait l’argent. S’il étoit donc possible de le découvrir totalement de sa croûte externe, on y appercevroit un nombre infini de routes souterreines percées sans suite, et comme au hasard, selon la direction des veines métalliques.” Mémoires Philosophiques, t. i. p. 289.

Footnote 980:

Οὗτοι μὲν οὖν λύχνους προσδεδεμένους τοῖς μετώποις ἔχοντες λατομοῦσιν, ἀκολουθοῦντες οἷον φλεβὶ τῷ λευκανθίζοντι. Phot. Bib. p. 448. a.

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The laborious operation of collecting and hurrying the ore was performed by boys of tender age, who deposited it beyond the mouth of the shaft. Another class of workmen, consisting chiefly of the aged and the infirm, now bore the metalliferous stones to that part of the works where the founders were stationed. These were powerful and robust men in the flower of their age, who, with large stone mortars and iron pestles, reduced, under the eye of rigid Inspectors, the ore to small fragments not exceeding a vetch in size.[981] This done, it was transferred to the mills which were turned by women, the wives and daughters of the miners, who, with the exception of a slender covering about the waist, were entirely naked, misery in all times and places rendering people contemptuous of appearances and indifferent to morality.[982] These mills, heavy no doubt and difficult to work, were turned by six women, three on either side. They would appear, however, to have answered well the purpose for which they were designed, since the ore, we are told, was reduced by them to the fineness of flour; after which it was handed over to the Selangeus, the last link in that long chain of operators which connected the mine with the smelting furnace. The business of the Selangeus consisted in separating the metal from the matrix in which it had been produced. For this purpose, the auriferous dust was cast in a heap upon a broad polished board slightly inclined,[983] and there washed and triturated until the greater part of the terrene particles had been, by soft sponges and water, separated from the gold, which was next put into earthen vessels with small quantities of lead, tin, salt, and barley-bran, and placed in the smelting furnace, where it was subjected, for five days and nights, to the flames. This done, the virgin gold came forth glittering and pure as if it had not been wrung from human agony or sullied by human tears.

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Footnote 981:

Cf. Diod. Sicul. iii. 13.

Footnote 982:

Οὗτος δὲ ἐστιν ὁ πόνος τῶν γυναικῶν τῶν εἰς τὰς φυλακὰς συναπηγμένων ἀνδράσιν ἢ γονεῦσι. Μύλοι γὰρ ἑξῆς πλείους βεβήκασιν, ἐφ᾽ οὒς τὸν ἐπτισμένον ἐπιβάλλουσι λίθον· καὶ παραστᾶσαι τρεῖς ἑκατέρωθεν πρὸς τὴν μίαν κώπην, οὕτως ἐζωσμέναι δυσπροσόπτως ὥστε μόνον τὴν αἰσχύνην τοῦ σώματος κρύπτειν, ἀλήθουσιν. Phot. Bib. p. 448. a.

Footnote 983:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 21.

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In the smelting furnaces of Greece, notwithstanding the doubts of Reitemeier, which Bœckh is contented to combat with mere inferences,[984] it is quite certain that charcoal was used,[985]—in the first smelting, that of the aria, the arbutus, and the oak, of which the last was least esteemed; and in the second, that of the pitch-pine. In the iron mines the charcoal of the Eubœan walnut-tree was preferred for second smelting.

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Footnote 984:

“That the Athenians made use of the bellows and of charcoal is not improbable; the latter, indeed, may be fairly inferred from the account of the charcoal-sellers, or rather charcoal-burners, from which business a large portion of the Acharnians in particular obtained their livelihood.” Dissertation on the Mines of Laurion. Pub. Econ., &c. t. ii. p. 443.

Footnote 985:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 1, sqq.

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This leads us to speak of the preparation of charcoal, which was effected in the following manner:—having excavated a circular cavity in the earth, they pitched or paved it at bottom, and piling up to a great height the billets of wood, which were selected for their straightness in order that they might lie as close as possible, covered over the whole with earth and turf, so as to form a circular mound, like a barrow. The heap was then set on fire, and the covering pierced on all sides with spits, to provide a vent for the smoke. The fire having been kept burning for the proper time, which is not stated, the charcoal was removed and laid by for use.[986] Extensive works of this kind were established at the borough of Acharnè, in Attica, which was supplied with wood, chiefly the scarlet oak, from the forests on Mount Parnes.[987]

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Footnote 986:

Id. v. 9. 5. ix. 3. 1.

Footnote 987:

Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 302, 587. Diog. Laert. i. 8. 5.

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Much stress was laid by Hellenic artificers on the materials from which the charcoal was manufactured: thus smiths, braziers, and other handicraftsmen preferred that of the pitch-pine to what was made from the oak, because it exhibited a greater tractability to the bellows, keeping up a more enduring flame, and being less liable to sudden extinction, though inferior in force. Generally, in fact, all dry woods furnish a brisker and a brighter flame. Twigs and small branches, as the Greek philosophers had observed, yield, while burning, the fiercest heat; but it was supposed that they were too deficient in body to be profitably converted into charcoal. In France, however, and other parts of the Continent, we find twigs no bigger than goose-quills used for this purpose. Some kinds of wood, it was observed, produce in burning a far greater quantity of smoke than others.[988] Of these are all such as delight in humid situations, as the platane and the willow, with the black and white poplar. The vine,[989] too, while moist, stands in the same category, though it yield the palm to the date-palm, which enjoyed among the ancients the reputation of being the smokiest tree that grows.[990] In sharpness, however, the smoke of the fig-tree was supposed to excel, together with that of the wild fig-tree,[991] and generally all such natives of the forest as abound in a milky juice. Nevertheless, having been barked, steeped in running-water, and dried again,[992] these same kinds of wood were freer than all others from smoke, and yielded the softest and purest flame.[993] The same thing is remarked of wood which had been washed with the lees of oil.[994]

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Footnote 988:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 5.

Footnote 989:

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 326. Lysist. 308. The Haliphloios, a species of oak, was supposed by the ancients to be peculiarly obnoxious to lightning, on which account the Æolians never used its wood in sacrifice. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 8. 52. 5. Cf. v. 1. 2.

Footnote 990:

Τοῦ τε δυσκαπνοτάτου φοίνικος ἐκ γῆς ῥιζοφοιτήτους φλέβας. Chæremon, ap. Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 5.

Footnote 991:

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 145. Plut. Sympos. v. 9.

Footnote 992:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 5.

Footnote 993:

Among the uses of charcoal was that of being rammed down under the foundations of temples, as in that of Artemis at Ephesos: Rursus ne in lubrico atque instabili fundamenta tantæ molis locarentur, calcatis ea substravere carbonibus dein velleribus lanæ. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 21. On the incorruptibility of charcoal, St. Augustin, who loved to declaim a little, thus writes:—“Quid? in carbonibus nonne miranda est, et tanta infirmitas, ut ictu levissimo frangantur, pressu facillime conterantur: et tanta firmitas ut nullo humore corrumpantur, nulla ætate vincantur, usque adeo ut eos substernere soleant.... Quis eos in terra humida effossos, ubi ligna putrescerent, tamdiu durare incorruptibilior posse, nisi rerum ille corruptor ignis effecit?” De Civitat. Dei, xxxi. 4. The charcoal was thus employed by the advice of Theodoros, the son of Rhæcos, the Samian. Οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ συμβουλεύσας ἄνθρακας ὑποτεθῆναι τοῖς θεμελίοις τοῦ ἐν Ἐφέσω νεώ. Καθύγρου γὰρ ὄντος τοῦ τόπου, τοὺς ἄνθρακας ἔφη, τὸ ξυλῶδες ἀποβαλόντας, αὐτὸ τὸ στερεὸν ἀπαθὲς ἔχειν ὕδατι. Diog. Laert. ii. 8. § 19.

Footnote 994:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xv. 8. Cf. Martial. xiii. 15.

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In Egypt, where charcoal is at present procured chiefly from the wood of the acacia, and supplied in most cases from the Desert, it was anciently prepared, especially for the use of smiths, from the long, tough, triangular roots of the sari,[995] (Cyperus fastigiatus,) which resembled those of the papyrus, likewise burnt for fuel.[996] The smiths of Hellas,[997] however, were not reduced to depend entirely upon charcoal, since both in Liguria and Elis, on the road, it has been conjectured, leading over Mount Pholoë to Olympia,[998] pits had been opened whence the forges were supplied with fossil coal.

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Footnote 995:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 8. 5.

Footnote 996:

Id. Hist. Plant. iv. 8. 4. Dioscor. i. 115.

Footnote 997:

Οὓς δὲ καλοῦσιν εὐθὺς ἄνθρακας τῶν θρυπτομένων διὰ τὴν χρείαν, εἰσὶ γεώδεις· ἐκκαίονται δὲ καὶ πυροῦνται καθάπερ οἱ ἄνθρακες. Εἰσὶ δὲ περί τε τὴν Λιγυστικὴν, ὅπου καὶ τὸ ἤλεκτρον, καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἠλεία βαδιζόντων Ὀλυμπίαζε τὴν δι’ ὄρους, οἷς καὶ οἱ χαλκεῖς χρῶνται. Theoph. de Lapid. § 16.

Footnote 998:

Annot. ad Theoph. iv. 552. Xen. Anab. v. 3. 10. Strab. viii. p. 145. Sieb.

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We may here observe, by the way, that the ancients, instead of flint and steel, or lucifer matches, made use, in kindling a fire, of a curious apparatus still employed in the East:[999] it consisted of two parts, the one hollowed out like a diminutive mortar, the other resembling a pestle, which was inserted into it, and turned round with extreme velocity until sparks were produced. This necessary piece of furniture[1000] was most commonly manufactured of ivy, or laurel, or clematis, and was something of the rhamnus ilex, or linden-tree; in short, of nearly all trees, except the olive. Generally, however, it was thought best to make the two parts of the instrument of different kinds of wood. It was observed that, with these contrivances, fire kindled more readily during the prevalence of the north than the south wind, and on high places than in hollows. At Rome the vestal virgins originated the sacred fire by means of a kind of mirror, and the power of burning-glasses was not unknown.[1001] Nay, things resembling our lucifer matches were possessed by certain jugglers, though they do not appear to have passed into general use, either because the inventors refused to divulge their secret, or from the natural slowness of mankind to profit by useful discoveries.[1002]

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Footnote 999:

Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 194.

Footnote 1000:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 4, sqq.

Footnote 1001:

Aristoph. Nub. 758. Cf. Orph. Lith. 171. p. 111.

Footnote 1002:

Athen. i. 35.

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CHAPTER V. INDUSTRY: HOUSE-BUILDERS, CARPENTERS, CABINET-MAKERS, TURNERS, MUSICAL INSTRUMENT-MAKERS, POTTERS, GLASS-WORKERS, ETC.

Another flourishing branch of industry was that of quarrying stones for building, carried on wherever marble, or freestone, or tufa, or granite, was found.[1003] The stones were usually fashioned by the axe, or saw,[1004] in the quarry, and drawn thence by ropes. In many cases, however, as where cheapness or despatch was aimed at, bricks were substituted,[1005] made, in addition to the materials at present employed, from powdered tufa.[1006]

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Footnote 1003:

Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 37.

Footnote 1004:

Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 299.

Footnote 1005:

Plato de Rep. t. vi. p. 15. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, ii. 544. Goguet. iv. 11. Theoph. de Lapid. 48.

Footnote 1006:

Winkelmann, ii. 544.

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In the preparation of mortar and cement the Greeks exhibited extraordinary ingenuity.[1007] They made use, in the first place, of lime procured by burning coarse marble in the ordinary way, or, secondly, obtained from sea-shells, or stones picked up on the banks of rivers. A superior kind of cement was made from those stones used in the manufacture of gypsum, which was so firm and durable, that it was frequently found to outlast the materials which it had been employed to unite. It was prepared by being reduced to powder, and mixed with water, and afterwards well stirred with a piece of wood, since it was too hot to admit of the hands being used. When removed from old walls it might be burnt and prepared a second and a third time, as originally from the stone.[1008] This, in Syria and Phœnicia, was used in facing the walls of houses, and in Italy for whitening them, as well as in the making of various mouldings and ornaments within.[1009]

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Footnote 1007:

On one occasion, moreover, when they happened to be in lack of hods, they gave proof of no less ingenuity in their mode of carrying mortar. In the hasty construction of the fortress of Pylos, by Demosthenes and his companions, the soldiers took the mud, which was to serve as cement, on their bare backs, stooping forward that it might not fall off, and knotting their hands on their loins beneath their burden: καὶ τὸν πηλὸν, εἴπου δέοι χρῆσθαι, ἀγγείων ἀπορίᾳ, ἐπὶ τοῦ νώτου ἔφερον, ἐγκεκυφότες τε, ὡς μάλιστα μέλλοι ἐπιμένειν, καὶ τὼ χεῖρε ἐς τοὐπίσω ξυμπλέκοντες, ὅπως μὴ ἀποπίπτοι. Thucyd. iv. 4. The reader will, doubtless, be struck by the picturesque energy with which the great historian relates this humble fact.

Footnote 1008:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 65, sqq. The κονία, or stucco, was likewise called ἀσβέστος. A wall covered with this substance was called κεκονιαμένος τοῖχος. Schol. ad Theocrit. i. 31.

Footnote 1009:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 67.

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Frequently, also, it appears to have been employed like plaster of Paris in the casting of statues, as was that composed of powdered marble, in repairing such as by accident had been broken. An example of this was observed in the cheek of a sphynx dug up in the island of Capri.[1010] Instead of water, however, a tough glue, composed of the hides and horns of bulls, was employed in mixing it.[1011]

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Footnote 1010:

Winkelm. Hist de l’Art, ii. 81.

Footnote 1011:

Dioscor. v. 164.

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In the roofing of houses pantiles were commonly made use of;[1012] instead of which, as they were fragile and easily broken by hailstones, tiles of Pentelic marble, invented by Byzes of Naxos,[1013] were often substituted in the case of temples, as that for example of Zeus at Olympia. It is mentioned incidentally by Dioscorides, that physicians used to reduce acacia-wood to powder by burning it in the tile-kilns.[1014]

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Footnote 1012:

Luc. Contemplant. § 6.

Footnote 1013:

Of this Byzes, who lived in the age of Alyattes and Astyages, Pausanias gives the following account:—τὸ δὲ εὕρημα (viz. that of the tiles) ἀνδρὸς Ναξίου λέγουσιv εἶναι Βύζου, οὗ φασὶν ἐν Νάξω τὰ ἀγάλματα ἐφ᾽ ὧν ἐπίγραμμα εἶναι

Νάξιος Εὔεργός με γένει Λητοῦς πόρε, Βύζεω

Παῖς, ὃς πρώτιστος τεῦξε λίθου κέραμον.

De Situ Græciæ. v. 10. 3. Cf. Poll. i. 12. Another article produced by the same handicraftsmen was the chimney-pots, ὀπαίαι, which appear to have been in almost universal use: ὀπαίαν οἱ Ἀττικοὶ τὴν κεραμίδα ἐκάλουν, ἣ τὴν ὀπὴν εἶχεν. Poll. ii. 54. The nature of the ὀπαία is more exactly explained by the author of the Etymologicon Magnum: κράτης δέ φησιν ἀνοπαῖαν τὴν τὲ τρημένην κεραμίδα τὴν ἐπὶ τῆς ὀροφῆς. iii. 21.

Footnote 1014:

Dioscor. i. 133.

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Respecting the business of house-painters our information is exceedingly scanty; we may infer, however, that they excelled in the imitation of woods and marbles, since they were employed in imitating on the polished surface of one stone the veins and colours characteristic of another.[1015] Some persons covered the walls of their apartments with historical subjects,[1016] or landscapes, or the figures of animals in fresco.[1017] In later ages ceilings were painted, or inlaid with coloured stones,[1018] or abaculi, so as to imitate the feathers and hues of a peacock’s tail.[1019]

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Footnote 1015:

Winkelmann, ii. 68. Xenoph. Œconom. i. 3, seq.

Footnote 1016:

Dion Chrysost. i. 261. ii. 459.

Footnote 1017:

Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 153.

Footnote 1018:

Plat. De Rep. t. vi. p. 353. Pollux. x. 84.

Footnote 1019:

For a knowledge of this fact we are indebted to the elder Pliny: In Belgicâ provinciâ candidum lapidem serrâ, qua lignum, faciliusque etiam, secant, ad tegularum et imbricum vicem: vel si libeat, ad quæ vocant pavonacea tegendi genera, xxxvi. 44. On which Dalecampus has the following note: Docti complures legendum putant, pavita, aut pavimenta, i. e. pavimenti modo facta et constructa. Ego pavonacea interpretor, picturatis lapidum impositorum quadris ad instar pennarum pavonis fulgentia, et splendentia, ut hodie fit in principum ædibus tegulis magnâ colorum varietate nitentibus et conspicuis. See also the note of Hardouin in loc.

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Timber for house-building,[1020] the choice of which was regulated by law,[1021] abounded in most parts of Greece, though the best and straightest was obtained from Macedonia and Arcadia,[1022] particularly from a hollow valley near a place called Cranè, never visited by the sun, and fenced round by rocks on all sides from the winds.[1023] Very particular rules were laid down respecting the time and manner of felling trees;[1024] first, wood cut in spring was most easily barked; second, if this operation was neglected it bred worms, which furrowed its whole surface like written characters; third, such as was cut when the moon was below the horizon was thought harder and less liable to decay.[1025] It may here, perhaps, be worth observing, that stones and other substances were often found grown into the trunks of wild olive-trees. This was particularly the case with that which grew in the market-place of Megara. The oracle had foretold, that when this tree should be cut down the city would be sacked and destroyed, which was brought to pass by Demetrius. On this occasion the tree being felled and sawed into planks, greaves and other articles of Athenian workmanship were found in the heart of it.[1026] Fragments of the timber remained in the time of Theophrastus.

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Footnote 1020:

Among the frailest dwellings of mankind, with the exception perhaps of the paper houses of the Japanese, we may mention those of the Nasamones described by Herodotus, composed of the stems of the asphodel intertwisted with rushes: οἰκήματα δὲ σύμπηκτα ἐξ ἀνθερίκων ἐνερμένων περὶ σχοίνους ἐστὶ, καὶ ταῦτα περιφορητά. iv. 190. Cf. v. 101.

Footnote 1021:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 55.

Footnote 1022:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 2. 1.

Footnote 1023:

Id. iv. 1. 2.

Footnote 1024:

See a curious figure of the axe, Mus. Chiaramont, pl. 21. Of the time of fruit-bearing in forest trees, see Theoph. Hist. Plant, iii. 4. 4. The same naturalist remarks, that the ilex, in Arcadia, was perpetually covered with acorns, the old ones not falling off till the new ones appeared. The yew and the pine blossom, he observes, a little before midsummer, and the bright yellow flowers of the latter, are extremely beautiful in form. Ib.

Footnote 1025:

Geopon. i. 6. 4. iii. 1. 2. iii. 10. 4. iii. 15. 3. Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 1. 2.

Footnote 1026:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 2. 4.

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In cutting hard wood carpenters made use of a blunt axe,[1027] which thus became sharper, while soft wood produced the contrary effect.[1028] It was customary before timber was committed to the saw to soak it for some time in water;[1029] and it is said to have been rendered incombustible by a solution of alum and certain kinds of vinegar.[1030] The tools of the Greek carpenter as near as possible resembled our own; they had the saws small and great, the plane, the axe, the chisel, the square, the gimlet, the augur,[1031] the compass,[1032] and, in short, whatever else could be useful in their trade. Among the paintings of Herculaneum[1033] we find the representation of a carpenter’s workshop, where two winged genii are busily employed with the mallet and the saw. In making lines, &c., they used the ruddle now employed.[1034]

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Footnote 1027:

Lucian. Jup. Confut. § 11, who elsewhere commemorates the practice of carpenters, who shut one eye that they may see the better. Icaromenip. § 14.

Footnote 1028:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 4. 7.

Footnote 1029:

Id. v. 6. 4.

Footnote 1030:

Aul. Gell. Noct. Apt. xv. 1.

Footnote 1031:

Auger-handles and small mallets were made of oleaster, box, elm, and ash; large mallets of pine wood. Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 8.

Footnote 1032:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 179.

Footnote 1033:

Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 24, p. 181.

Footnote 1034:

Μίλτος τεκτονικὴ. Dioscor. v. 12.

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Among the kinds of timber in most general use was the silver fir, thought to be extremely durable, in illustration of which Theophrastus relates the following circumstance: it happened at Pheneos, in Arcadia,[1035] that, owing to the obstruction of the torrent-beds, the plain was converted into a lake. To traverse this they constructed bridges of fir, and when the flood rose still higher, bridge upon bridge was erected in succession. Afterwards when the waters had worked themselves a passage and ebbed off, the whole of the wood of these bridges was found in the completest preservation.[1036] The other kinds of timber were the elm, used for doors, hinges, and weasel traps;[1037] the cypress,[1038] cedar, and juniper for wainscoting, beams, and paneled ceilings; the Arcadian, and the Idæan yew,[1039] which latter was sometimes fraudulently substituted for cedar; the Eubœan walnut, and the beech, which, not being subject to the rot, were resorted to for piles and substructions.[1040] The former of these trees, which grew to an extraordinary size, was likewise applied to the roofing of houses, chiefly because, by a loud crackling noise, it gave notice when it was about to break, and thus afforded the inmates leisure to effect their escape. This happened at the public baths of Antandros, where the company foreseeing from this warning sound the catastrophe that was approaching, rushed forth into the streets, and thus avoided being overwhelmed beneath the ruins.[1041]

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Footnote 1035:

In this country the pitch pine (πίτυς) was rare, but it abounded in Elis. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iii. 94.

Footnote 1036:

Id. v. 4. 6.

Footnote 1037:

Id. v. 3. 5-7. 4-4, seq.

Footnote 1038:

Athen. ix. 67.

Footnote 1039:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 10. 1, seq.

Footnote 1040:

Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iii. 8. 4. v. 7. 7.

Footnote 1041:

Id. v. 6. 1.

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The box, the ilex, and the lotos, they employed for door-pivots, which were seasoned by being immersed in cow-dung.[1042]

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Footnote 1042:

Id. v. 5. 4-6.

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Cart and wheel wrights,[1043] necessarily pretty numerous, made use in their trade of the following kinds of wood,—the scarlet oak,[1044] in countries not abounding with ilex, as Laconia and Elis, for carts, ploughs, and other rustic implements; the oxya, the fir, and the elm, for chariot-bodies;[1045] the ilex, the box, the ash, and the mast-bearing beech, for axletrees. The wood of all glutinous trees is naturally flexible, but more especially that of the mulberry and the wild fig, for which reason these, together with the platane, and the poplar, were used for making the bended rims of chariot-seats, and the circles of wheels.[1046] For spokes, the wood of the cornel tree was preferred, and that of the box, the yew, the maple, and the carpinus—hedge-beech, or hornbeam—for the yokes of oxen. In old times the bodies of carts were often formed of basket-work. It may be remarked by the way, that the Greeks understood the use of the drag-wheel.[1047]

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Footnote 1043:

Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 462. Poll. i. 253.

Footnote 1044:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 16. 3.

Footnote 1045:

Id. iii. 10. 1.

Footnote 1046:

Id. v. 6. 2.

Footnote 1047:

Athen. iii. 55.

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It has long been made a question among the learned[1048] whether the ancients were or were not acquainted with the saddle, properly so called. It may now be determined in the affirmative, since, besides the several testimonies of classical writers, which are much too clear to be set aside, we find in several Herculanean pictures exact representations of saddles, both on horses and asses, with girths and cruppers exactly as in modern times.[1049] It is evident, too, that they are constructed upon wooden frames, to which Herodotus may possibly allude where he speaks of saddles made of tanned human skins.[1050] Packsaddles for sumpter-asses are of constant occurrence in history; and that they were tolerably thick may be inferred from the fact, that numbers of daggers were concealed in them by Aratos in his attempt upon Argos.[1051] I shall here mention, also, by the way, and without entering into any discussion, that horses and asses were occasionally shod by the ancients,[1052] though the practice was doubtless not universal.

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Footnote 1048:

Beckmann decides for the negative, i. 247.

Footnote 1049:

Antich. di Ercol. t. ii. tav. 12, p. 79. t. iii. pp. 227. 231.

Footnote 1050:

Herod. iv. 64.

Footnote 1051:

Plut. Arat. § 25.

Footnote 1052:

Beckmann, History of Inventions, ii. 170, sqq.

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The trade of the cooper[1053] was in less general request than in modern times; his principal employment being the making of tubs, with flour and water-casks; their wine having been chiefly preserved in jars.[1054] Latterly, however, small kegs got into use, as well probably as larger casks even for wine. Pump-makers, together with the pump itself,[1055] came in late, and of fire-engines they possessed barely the first rudiments.[1056]

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Footnote 1053:

Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 1168.

Footnote 1054:

Id. 1055. 789.

Footnote 1055:

Cf. Dutens, Orig. des Découv. p. 258. Aristoph. Pac. 17, seq. Eq. 432, cum Schol.

Footnote 1056:

Beckmann, iv. 75, seq.

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In speaking elsewhere of the household furniture of the Greeks we necessarily anticipated much of what was to be said respecting cabinet-makers and upholsterers. Some few particulars, however, omitted in that place, shall be here introduced. With respect to the price of furniture at Athens,[1057] it seems much better to be silent than by a few imperfect conjectures to confine the mind of the reader. We know absolutely nothing of the matter.

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Footnote 1057:

Cf. Bœckh, Pub. Econ. of Athens. i. 1441, whose laborious researches on this subject lead to no result.

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Among the Egyptians, the roots of the Persea,[1058] a beautiful fruit-tree, said to have been poisonous in Persia,[1059] furnished the materials not only of statues but of bedsteads and tables, which were of a rich dark colour and received a fine polish.[1060] There was likewise, in Syria, a species of wood the blackness of which was interveined with ruddy streaks, so that it looked like variegated ebony. From this were manufactured bedsteads, chairs, and other expensive articles of furniture.[1061] The maple-tree grows both on plains and mountains. In the latter situation its wood is of a pleasant reddish colour, finely veined and solid,[1062] on which account it was much used in superior cabinet-work. The zygian maple, in general beautifully clouded, was so hard, that it required to be steeped in water before it could be wrought.[1063] Of all woods the ancients considered that of the cypress[1064] the most durable, and it is related in confirmation of this opinion, that the doors of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, which were made of it, had already lasted four centuries in the time of Theophrastus.[1065] It took the finest polish, and was therefore employed in costly cabinet-work. The wood of the tree called thuia (a species perhaps of wild cypress), abounding in Cyrenè, and the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon,[1066] was thought to be incorruptible; and from its roots, which were beautifully clouded, the most delicate articles of furniture were manufactured. Next to these the wood of the mulberry-tree was preferred, which exhibited a dusky grain like that of the lotos.[1067] Expensive bedsteads were sometimes made of oxya and citron-wood, the feet of which, among the Persians, were often turned from the wood of the doom-palm,[1068] as they were formed among the Greeks from amber.[1069] Statues,[1070] which ought in truth to be regarded as articles of furniture, were carved from cedar, cypress,[1071] lotos, box, and of a smaller size from the roots of olive-trees, because they did not crack.[1072] Besides these which were perhaps the more common, we find mention in ancient writers of images of ebony, oak, yew, maple, beech, palm,[1073] myrtle, pear, linden, and vine, to which may be added the fig-tree which was frequently preferred on account of its soft texture, lightness, shining whiteness, and close-grain. Occasionally statues of horses were carved of ebony and ivory. As during the prevalence of certain winds several of these kinds of woods were liable to sweat,[1074] the vulgar, who understood nothing of the cause, regarded the circumstance as a prodigy.[1075]

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Footnote 1058:

This tree, which bore fruit in Egypt, only flowered in Rhodes. iii. 3. 5.

Footnote 1059:

Ælian. De Natur. Animal. ap. Schneid. ad Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 2. 5. t. iii. p. 284. The account of this tree given by Dioscorides contains a brief allusion to the fact related at length by Ælian, that it was poisonous in its original country, together with some other particulars nowhere else I believe stated. Περσέα δένδρον ἐστὶν ἐν Ἀιγύπτῳ, καρπὸν φέρον ἐδώδιμον, εὐστόμαχον· ἐφ᾽ οὗ καὶ τὰ λεγόμενα κρανοκόλαπτα φαλάγγια εὑρίσκεται, μάλιστα δὲ ἐν Θηβαΐδι. Δύναμιν δὲ ἔχει τὰ φύλλα λεία ἐπιπλαττόμενα ξηρὰ, αἱμοῤῥαγίαν ἱστᾷν, τοῦτο δὲ ἱστόρησαν τινες ἐν Περσίδι ἀναιρετικὸν εἶναι, μετατεθὲν δὲ εἰς Ἀιγύπτον, ἀλλοιωθῆναι καὶ ἐδώδιμον γενέσθαι. i. 187.

Footnote 1060:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 2. 5. Cf. Clusii. Hist. Rar. Plant. i. 2.

Footnote 1061:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 3. 3. Cf. Gitone, Il Costume Antico e Moderno di tutti i Popoli. t. i. p. 94, tav. 15.

Footnote 1062:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 11. 12, seq.

Footnote 1063:

Id. v. 3. 3.

Footnote 1064:

This tree was supposed particularly to delight in the perpetual snows of the Cretan Ida. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 1. 3.

Footnote 1065:

Hist. Plant. v. 4. 2.

Footnote 1066:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 37, seq. Cf. Plin. Hist. Nat. 30. Diod. Sicul. v. 46. This wood, on account of its extraordinary durability, was much used in the roofing of ancient temples. Many suppose it to be the Arbor Vitæ. Clus. Hist. Rar. Plant. i. 24. p. 36, seq.

Footnote 1067:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 4. 3.

Footnote 1068:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 2. 7.

Footnote 1069:

Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 530.

Footnote 1070:

Plat. De Rep. t. vi. 86. Plin. viii. 39. xxxv. 36. xxxiii. 54. Poll. i. 7. See the note of the Milanese editor of Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art, t. i. p. 31, seq.

Footnote 1071:

Plut. Alex. § 14. Herod. ii. 131. Pausanias supplies a list of the different kinds of wood used in the most ancient statues. viii. 17. 2.

Footnote 1072:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 3. 7.

Footnote 1073:

Id. v. 3. 6.

Footnote 1074:

Cf. Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 9. 8.

Footnote 1075:

Plut. Alex. § 14.

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From the knotted wood of the fir-tree, tablets for painting or writing on were made, the inferior kinds of which were very common; but there was a superior and very beautiful sort used only by the opulent.[1076]

-----

Footnote 1076:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 9. 7.

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Another piece of furniture in all Greek houses was the chest or coffer[1077] in which money and plate, or costly garments, were deposited. Articles of this description were frequently manufactured of the finest and most aromatic woods, as cedar for example, and adorned on all sides, as well as on the cover, with numerous figures in relief, sometimes in gold or ivory, as in the case of the celebrated coffer of Cypselos preserved in the treasury at Olympia.[1078] Generally, however, they were made of humbler materials; sometimes veneered with thin planks of yew, which took a high polish. Persons of inferior means substituted for these, mallequins of fine basket-work, or plaited from the bark of cherry or linden-tree.[1079] We may here remark by the way, that bread-baskets were manufactured from willows and the twigs of chestnut-trees,[1080] cleanly peeled, and that in Egypt articles of this description were generally woven or plaited from the leaves of the date and doom-palm, and probably variegated in colour as they are at present. At the court, however, bread-baskets were at one period of gold, but fashioned so as to resemble the rush-baskets in use among the earlier Greeks.[1081]

-----

Footnote 1077:

Schweigh. Anim. in Athen. t. vi. p. 52. Schol. Arist. Eq. 1207. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. 310. Poll. vii. 79. Plat. Tim. t. vii. pp. 52. 61. Luc. Amor. § 39. Arist. De Mund. c. vi.

Footnote 1078:

Creuzer. Commentat. Herodot. Ægypt. et Hellen. i. § 7. p. 62, seq. Raoul Rochette, Cours D’Archéologie, p. 342, seq.

Footnote 1079:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 10. 4-13. 1. v. 7. 5. Philost. Icon. i. 31. p. 809.

Footnote 1080:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 15. 2. v. 7. 7. Common baskets too were made of the leaves of the dwarf-palm, Id. i. 6. 11, and various domestic utensils from the roots of the papyrus. Id. iv. 8. 4.

Footnote 1081:

Athen. vi. 15.

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Lanterns, too, in the first instance, were of basketwork,[1082] though afterwards manufactured, as in modern times, with thin plates of horn or ivory.[1083]

-----

Footnote 1082:

Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 428.

Footnote 1083:

Athen. vi. 157. That the trade of lantern-making was of considerable importance in the ancient world may be inferred from the great number of lanterns made use of in fortified cities, either when actually besieged, or when apprehensive of sudden attacks from the enemy. See on this subject a long and interesting passage in Æneas Tacticus, cap. xxvi. p. 81, seq. Ed. Orell. Cf. cap. xxii. p. 67, seq.

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In some parts of Greece when individuals, not possessing costly furniture, desired to give a grand entertainment, they hired whatever articles they stood in need of, as seats, beds, vases, &c., of a broker, whose business, in the island of Samos, was once carried on by the tyrant Polycrates.[1084]

-----

Footnote 1084:

Athen. xii. 57.

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As ivory entered largely into the making of furniture among the ancients,[1085] the reader will not regret to find here an explanation of the means by which it was rendered soft and tractable. This secret appears hitherto to have escaped the modern writers on Art. Monsieur Dutens[1086] and the Milanese editors of Winkelmann[1087] observe, that the ancients possessed the art of softening ivory without, however, giving any intimation that they understood in what the secret consisted. But the whole matter was extremely simple, since they merely steeped the piece of ivory about to be worked in a fermented liquor, called zythos,[1088] prepared from barley, and drank commonly, with or without a mixture of honey, by all persons in Gaul. Many of these ivory ornaments were produced by the turning-lathe. They turned also from the knots of the Arcadian fir large bowls of a shining black colour.[1089] There was even a kind of stone which, being soft when drawn from the quarry, was turned and cut into bowls, plates, and other articles for the table, which were susceptible of a high polish, and became hard by constant exposure to the air.[1090]

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Footnote 1085:

Luc. Cynic. § 9. Somn. seu Gall. § 14.

Footnote 1086:

Origine des Découvertes, p. 194.

Footnote 1087:

Histoire de l’Art. p. 34.

Footnote 1088:

Εὐεργης δὲ καὶ ὁ ἔλεφας γίνεταὶ βρεχόμενος αὐτῳ. Dioscor. ii. 109.

Footnote 1089:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 1.

Footnote 1090:

Id. de Lapid. § 42. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 44. Tournefort, Voyage, t. i. p. 209.

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It was, probably, to the turner’s art that the Greeks owed many of those straight and elegant kinds of walkingsticks,[1091] particularly affected by the opulent, and called Persian, doubtless because the use of them came originally from Asia. Others preferred the Laconian scytale,[1092] fashioned usually from a piece of whitethorn, and philosophers, sticks of olive-wood.[1093] Rustics then, as now, were in the habit of carrying twisted and uncouth walkingstaves, bent sometimes atop, and of heavy materials. The straight light stem of the malachè,[1094] and birch, and elder,[1095] were likewise in use; while some carried sticks made from the agnus castus or the laurel, which were believed to possess the virtue of preserving those who bore them from accident or injury.[1096] The making of umbrellas or parasols, which opened and closed like our own,[1097] no doubt constituted a separate branch of industry. These articles, it may be observed, were manufactured with great elegance, with handles gracefully ornamented, and furnished at the periphery[1098] with numerous elongated drops. It was, probably, the same tradesmen in whose shops were found those folding-seats, or camp-stools, invented by Dædalos, the use of which seems to have been very common at Athens.[1099]

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Footnote 1091:

Gitone, Il Costume, pl. 20.

Footnote 1092:

Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. 170, seq. Suid. v. σκύταλον, t. ii. p. 768. b. Poll. iv. 170. v. 18. x. 113.

Footnote 1093:

Luc. Dial. Meret. xi. § 3. The Celastron, an evergreen, and the Mya, were also used for walkingsticks. Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 7.

Footnote 1094:

Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 3. 2, seq.

Footnote 1095:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 13. 4. 14. 4. Old men sometimes flourished a pair. Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 272. Generally, however, they were content, even in winter, with one, and were, therefore, compared by the poets to three-legged stools. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 533. Æschyl. Agam. 80. Eurip. Troad. 275. For the thick, heavy staff affected by old men see in Zoëga (Bassi Rilievi, tav. 40) a basso rilievo representing the Death of Meleager.

Footnote 1096:

Dioscor. i. 135.

Footnote 1097:

To this fact Aristophanes jocularly alludes, where he describes the ears of the Demos as opening and closing under the influence of eloquence. Equit. 1344, seq.

Τὰ δ᾽ ὦτα γάρ σου, νὴ Δί᾽, ἐξεπετάννυται, Ὥσπερ σκιάδιον, καὶ πάλιν ξυνήγεται.

On this passage the Scholiast observes: σκέπασμά τι, ὅπερ αἱ γυναῖκες παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἔχουσι θέουσαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ καίεσθαι τὰς ὄψεις ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου. ἐκτείνεται δὲ καὶ συστέλλεται πρὸς τὸν κατεπείγοντα καιρόν.

Footnote 1098:

Hope, Costumes of the Ancients.—Gitone, Il Cost. Ant. e Mod. pl. 17. pl. 67.

Footnote 1099:

Aristoph. Eq. 1384. cum Schol.

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Respecting the manufacture of musical instruments, we have but a few particulars to communicate, though it formed a profitable branch of industry in every part of Greece. Musical instruments were divided by the ancients into three kinds:[1100] those which were played by means of the breath,—the pipe, the trumpet, and the flute; those whose harmony resided in their strings, as the lyre and the cithara; and those which produced sound by beating or clashing against each other, as cymbals and the drum. The best trumpets, supposed to have been an invention of the Tyrrhenians,[1101] were obtained from Italy, though on many occasions great sea-shells were substituted for those larger instruments. In the East, trumpets were sometimes manufactured of cow-hide, though the usual materials were brass and iron, with a little bone for the mouth-piece.[1102] There were two kinds,—the straight and the crooked.

-----

Footnote 1100:

Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 312.

Footnote 1101:

Poll. iv. 70. Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 133. Cf. Raoul Rochette, Cours D’Archéol. p. 136. In lieu of trumpets the Indians, we are told, made use of certain whips, by the flourishing and cracking of which in the air they produced a kind of rude music. These strange sounds were accompanied by the low and terrible roll of their great drums, which still continue to delight the ear of the Hindùs. Suid. v. σάλπιγξ, t. ii. 709. b. For the common form of the trumpet see Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 81. Zoëga, Bassi Rilievi, tav. 9.

Footnote 1102:

Poll. iv. 71.

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Of the pipe of barley-straw,[1103] invented by Osiris, nothing need be said except, that its use and manufacture formed the amusement of shepherds. The fashioning of the common pipe constituted an important branch of industry, particularly in Bœotia, where the reed[1104] from which it was made abounded in the Orchomenian marshes,[1105] between the Cephisos and the Melas, in the place called Pelecania.[1106] The season for cutting, which prevailed up to the age of Antigones, was the month Boedromion; but, for the improvement of the instrument, that musician altered the time, which thenceforward was in the months Scirophorion and Hecatombion.[1107] The reeds were prepared in the following manner: being cut, they were piled in a heap with their leaves on, and left in the open air during the whole winter. Having in spring been cleared of their outer integuments, well rubbed and exposed to the sun, they were, during the summer, cut into lengths at the knots, and left a little longer in the open air.[1108] The internodial spaces did not fall short of two palms in length, and the best portions of the reed used for making the double pipe[1109] was about the middle.[1110] Pipes and flutes[1111] were likewise manufactured of the leg-bones of stags, at least in Bœotia. The lotos-wood[1112] transverse flute was an invention of the Africans. The elymœan flute made of boxwood owed its origin to the Phrygians, and was played during the worship of Cybelè. That called hippophorbos was invented by the last dwellers of Libya, who habitually played on it while pasturing their great droves of horses in the desert.[1113] It appears to have been a very simple instrument, fashioned of a piece of laurel-wood, by removing the bark and scooping out the pith. Its sharp shrill sound which could be heard far and near, delighted the ears of the horses, who probably, like the Turks, estimate the merit of music by its loudness. The monaulos, a favourite invention of the Egyptians, spoken of by Sophocles in his Thamyris, was usually played in marriage concerts.[1114] The lugubrious funeral-pipe of the Carians was a Phrygian invention. There existed among the Thebans a curious instrument of this kind, probably used in hunting, made from the bones of fawns, with a coating of bronze.[1115] The Tyrrhenians, like the rude sportsmen of Europe, drew music from the horn. Among the Phœnicians was a small flute made of goose-bones, not exceeding a span in length, called gingras[1116] in honour of Adonis, so named in their language, which emitting a plaintive and melancholy note, was doubtless much used in the wailing orgies of that divinity. Its character being exceedingly simple, it was habitually put into the hands of beginners,[1117] and seems to have been very common at Athens. The most extraordinary pipes, however, enumerated by ancient writers, were the ones in which those Scythian tribes denominated by the Greeks, Cannibals, Black Cloaks, and Arimaspians, delighted; and manufactured from the leg-bones of eagles and vultures.[1118] The Celts and the islanders of the ocean, our own forefathers, doubtless eschewed the music of vultures’ legs, and contented themselves with the notes of the syrinx.[1119]

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Footnote 1103:

Cf. Aristot. Problem. xix. 23.

Footnote 1104:

Cf. Philost. Icon. i. 20. p. 794.

Footnote 1105:

The borders of this lake must at all times have presented a most picturesque appearance, tufted as they were with thickets of the willow and the eleagnos, while a variety of terrestrial and aquatic plants descended its banks and spread themselves far into the water, as the pipe and the common reed, the white nymphæa, the typha, the phleos, the cyperos, the menyanthos, the icmè, and the ipnon. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 10. 1.

Footnote 1106:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 8. Dioscor. i. 94. The κάλαμος συριγγίας is the Saccharum Ravennæ of Sibthorp, Flora Græca, tab. 52, where it is observed, that it is found “in Peloponneso coprosè; ad littora Ponti Euxini propè Fanar.”

Footnote 1107:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 9.

Footnote 1108:

The form of the modern pipe is thus described by Chandler, who, after having spoken of the taborer, adds “this was accompanied by a pipe with a reed for the mouth-piece, and below it a circular rim of wood, against which the lips of the player came. His cheeks were much inflated, and the notes so various, shrill, and disagreeable, as to remind me of the composition designed for the ancient Aulos or flute, as was fabled by Minerva.” Travels, &c. i. 49.

Footnote 1109:

Cf. Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 65.

Footnote 1110:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 11. 6, seq.

Footnote 1111:

Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 827, seq. Cf. Plat. De Rep. t. vi. p. 386.

Footnote 1112:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 3. 3. Poll. iv. 74.

Footnote 1113:

Poll. iv. 74. Comm. t. iv. p. 720. Ælian. De Nat. Animal. xii. 44.

Footnote 1114:

Poll. iv. 75.

Footnote 1115:

Id. iv. 75.

Footnote 1116:

Athen. iv. 76. Poll. iv. 76.

Footnote 1117:

Athen. iv. 75. Hesych. v. γιγγρίσι.

Footnote 1118:

Poll. iv. 76.

Footnote 1119:

Suid. v. σύριγξ, t. ii. p. 844. a.

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In earlier times there was a flute appropriated to each mode, or grand division of the national music, but afterwards Pronomos of Thebes,[1120] invented one equally well suited to every mode. Even the manufacture of mouth-pieces, and flute-cases formed a considerable branch of industry. The materials from which the above instruments were chiefly made, were, in addition to those already mentioned, branches of the elder tree and dwarf laurel, bones of asses and kids, ivory and silver.[1121] Organs, and hydraulic organs, the latter invented by the Alexandrian barber Ctesibios, to whom antiquity was likewise indebted for the knowledge of the pump, were reckoned by the ancients among wind-instruments.[1122]

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Footnote 1120:

Cf. Dion Chrysost. i. 263.

Footnote 1121:

Jul. Scalig. Poet. i. 20, p. 78, seq.

Footnote 1122:

Athen. iv. 75. Pignor. de Serv. p. 88, seq. Vitruv. ix. 9.

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Of stringed-instruments the most common was the lyre,[1123] manufactured from many kinds of fine wood, and sometimes of ivory.[1124] The bridge was usually of ilex.[1125] The cithara,[1126] introduced at Athens by Phrynis,[1127] was made sometimes of horn with wooden pegs,[1128] though mention occurs of one formed entirely of solid gold, adorned with figures in relief of the Muses, Orpheus, and Apollo, and thickly studded with emeralds and other precious stones.[1129] The magadis,[1130] sometimes reckoned among wind-instruments, was unquestionably stringed, since we find Timotheus, accused at Sparta of innovating in the number of its chords, pointing out to his accuser an ancient statue of Apollo, in which the god was represented playing on a magadis with an equal number.[1131] In proof of its antiquity it may be remarked, that Lesbothemis, a sculptor, who flourished in a remote age at Mytilene, where this instrument was always in high favour,[1132] represented one of the Muses with the magadis in her hand. The pectis, said to have been an invention of Sappho, and by some confounded with the magadis, ought rather perhaps to be regarded as a modification of that instrument.[1133] The epigoneion, so called from its inventor Epigonos, by birth an Ambraciot, though afterwards made a citizen of Sicyon, was a kind of harp with forty strings, resembling, probably, those many-chorded instruments represented on the monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia. This Epigonos, is said to have been the first person who in playing dispensed with the use of the plectron.[1134] The ancient Arabs forestalled Signor Paganini, and drew a world of sweet sounds from an instrument of one chord:[1135] the Assyrians had their pandoura, with three strings.[1136] Among the Scythians was found the pentachordon, stringed with thongs of raw bull-hide, and played on by a plectron of goat’s hoof. The Libyans, more especially the Troglodytes, filled their caverns with the music of the psithura, otherwise called the ascaron, an instrument a cubit square, which produced sounds resembling the tinkling of castanets. Cantharos attributes its invention to the Thracians. To these we may add the drum, the tambourine,[1137] with cymbals, and castanets, sometimes of brass, and sometimes of shells, played on by women in honour of Artemis.

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Footnote 1123:

A rude species of lyre is still in use in Asia Minor. Chandler, Travels, &c., i. 149.

Footnote 1124:

Athen. xv. 50. Herod. iv. 192.

Footnote 1125:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 6.

Footnote 1126:

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 574.

Footnote 1127:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 958.

Footnote 1128:

Luc. adv. Indoct. § 10.

Footnote 1129:

Id. § 8.

Footnote 1130:

Athen. iv. 35. Poll. iv. 61. Anab. vii. 3. Meur. Lect. Att. iv. 20.

Footnote 1131:

Athen. xiv. 40.

Footnote 1132:

Id. 36.

Footnote 1133:

Poll. iv. 59.

Footnote 1134:

Etym. Mag. 605. 45.

Footnote 1135:

Poll. iv. 60.

Footnote 1136:

There was likewise an instrument of four chords. Etym. Mag. 514. 34.

Footnote 1137:

See a representation of this instrument, with a portrait painted on the bottom of it. Antich. di Ercol. t. iv. p. 151.

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The business of the potter[1138] was held in considerable estimation among the Greeks, so that several celebrated cities rivalled each other in their productions. Among these, Athens,[1139] Samos, and Rhodes held the first rank.[1140] Even the Bœotian Aulis obtained some degree of reputation for its earthenware.[1141] But that made at Kolias,[1142] in Attica, from the clay there found, and richly painted with figures in minium, appears to have been the most beautiful known to antiquity.

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Footnote 1138:

On the potter’s wheel, see Suidas. v. κωλιάδος κεραμῆες. t. i. p. 1511. b.

Footnote 1139:

Aristoph. Acharn. 901, seq.

Footnote 1140:

Athen. xi. 37.

Footnote 1141:

Pausan. ix. 19. 8.

Footnote 1142:

Schol. Aristoph. Lysist. 2. Chandler, Travels, ii. 166. Lucian observes somewhat jocularly that in some parts of Africa the natives were driven to the use of ostrich’s eggs for goblets, because no potter’s clay was found in their country. De Dipsad. § 7. Cf. Plin. Nat. Hist. x. 1. Bochart. Hierozoic. Compend. ii. 16.

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The number of rough articles produced was prodigious, seeing that oil, and wine, and salt-fish, and pickles, and a variety of other commodities were exported in jars; while almost all culinary operations were carried on in earthern vessels. Such of these as found their way to Egypt, after the conquest of that country by the Persians, were filled with Nile water, and transported into the desert, on camels, to slake the thirst of the wayfarers on that arid waste.[1143] Perhaps, the largest articles of earthenware, however, were the corn-jars, some of which are said to have contained nearly a quarter of grain, in lieu of which plaited corbels were sometimes used.[1144] Much art and elegance was displayed in the forms, varnishing, and painting of fictile vases, some of which, of light and graceful contour, were made without bottoms, wholly for ornament.[1145] The colours employed in the painting of vases, more particularly those intended to hold the ashes of the dead, were generally light and durable; and the ease and beauty of the figures prove that the ancient potters paid great attention to the arts of design. The ornaments were extremely various, sometimes consisting of representations of the gods, as Heracles, Pan, or the genii, sometimes of oakleaves, garlands, or festoons, arranged with taste and elegance.[1146] Athenæus speaks of a kind of porcelain called Rhossican,[1147] covered with the forms of flowers, upon which Cleopatra expended five minæ per day. Another branch of the potter’s business consisted in the manufacturing of lamps,[1148] which were so generally in use, that, throughout the Greek and the Roman world, the sites of cities, the ruins of temples, and the sepulchral chambers excavated beneath the earth, lavishly abound with them, entire or in fragments.[1149] Hyperbolos is said to have amassed a considerable fortune by selling lamps of an inferior quality.[1150] Wax-candles, however, were likewise in use, at least in later ages,[1151] and with the same materials they fashioned artificial pomegranates and other ornaments, together with small portable images of animals, men, and gods, which, like our figures of plaster of Paris, were sold, as well as those of clay, about the streets. Some notion, too, may be formed of the price, since we find that a figure of Eros fetched a drachma.[1152]

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Footnote 1143:

Herodot. iii. 6. A large branch of the potter’s business consisted in the manufacture of earthen pipes used in conveying water to towns and cities. See Chandler, Travels, &c. i. 22. seq. 133.

Footnote 1144:

Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 614.

Footnote 1145:

Winkelmann, Hist, de l’Art. t. i. p. 30, seq.

Footnote 1146:

“Morning Chronicle,” July 17, 1838, p. 3, where we find an account of several of these jars dug up at Exeter.

Footnote 1147:

Athen. vi. 15.

Footnote 1148:

These were filled with the ἀρύταινα, a brazen ladle. Schol. Arist. Eq. 1087. Æropos, king of Macedon, was an amateur lamp-maker, devoting his leisure hours to the manufacture of diminutive lamps and tables, just as other kings used to unbend their minds, after the enjoyment of luxury, by painting, playing the flute, or wielding the turning-lathe. Plut. Demet. § 20.

Footnote 1149:

Herodot. ii. 62. Cf. Sophocl. Aj. 285, sqq.

Footnote 1150:

Aristoph. Eq. 1301. Vesp. 1001.

Footnote 1151:

Vid. Plin. xiii. 27. xvi. 70, cum not. Hard.—Antipat. ap. Anthol. Græc. vi. 249.

Footnote 1152:

Anacreon, 10. Athen. viii. 50. Suid. v. κοροπλάθοι t. ii. p. 1500. a.

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The manufacture of glass[1153] was carried to a very high degree of perfection among the ancients.[1154] They understood the methods of blowing, cutting, and engraving on it; could stain it of every rich and brilliant colour so as to imitate the most precious gems,[1155] from the ruby and the amethyst to the turquoise and the beryl; they could fashion it into jars, and bowls, and vases, exhibiting all the various hues of the peacock’s train, which, like shot-silks and the breast of the dove, exhibited fresh tints in every different light,—fading, quivering, and melting into each other as the eye changed its point of view.[1156] Squares of glass were produced, perfectly polished and transparent without, but containing figures of various colours in their interior.[1157] Glass, likewise, was wrought into bassi and alti rilievi, and cast, as gems were cut, into cameos.[1158] The manufacturers of Alexandria excelled in the working of glass,[1159] with which they skilfully imitated all kinds of earthenware, fabricating cups of every known form.

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Footnote 1153:

Plat. Tim. t. vii. p. 81.

Footnote 1154:

Large glass cups. Luc. Quomed. Hist. sit Conscrib. § 25. In the Antichita di Ercolano we see represented a glass vase so completely transparent, that the eggs with which it is filled are seen as distinctly as through water. t. ii. p. 111. Cf. t. iii. p. 287.

Footnote 1155:

Petron. Satyr, p. 99. Cf. Treb. Poll. Gallien. § 12. p. 321. Caylus supposes them to have mixed a small portion of lead with their glass. t. ii. p. 355.

Footnote 1156:

The allusions of ancient authors to these vases are few. They are mentioned, however, in a letter of Adrian to the Consul Servianus: “Calices tibi allassontes versicolores transmisi, quos mihi sacerdos templi obtulit, tibi et sorori meæ specialiter dedicatos, quos tu velim festis diebus conviviis adhibeas.” Vopisc. in Vit. Saturnin. cap. viii. Casaubon, in his note on this passage, speaks of these cups in the following terms: Allassontes qui colorem mutant sicut palumborum colla. The murrhine vases, the nature of which so many have attempted to explain, if they were not after all a species of glass, appear at least to have had many analogous qualities; and the following description of Pliny is calculated to create the highest idea of their beauty: “Splendor his sine viribus: nitorque verius quam splendor. Sed in pretio varietas colorum subinde circumagentibus se maculis in purpuram candoremque, et tertium ex utroque ignescentem, veluti per transitum coloris, in purpura, aut rubescente lacteo. Sunt qui maxime in iis laudent extremitates et quosdam colorum repercussus quales in cœlesti arcu spectantur.” Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 8.

Footnote 1157:

Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art. i. 48.

Footnote 1158:

Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 51. See Beckmann, Hist. of Inventions, vol. i. p. 240.

Footnote 1159:

Athen. xi. 28. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 756.

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It is added, moreover, that a certain kind of earth was found in Egypt, without which the best kind of coloured glass[1160] could not be produced. Petronius informs us, that, in the reign of Tiberius, a skilful experimentalist discovered the art of rendering this substance malleable, but that the emperor, from some freak of tyranny, put the man to death, and thus his secret was lost to the world.[1161] A similar act of cruelty was perpetrated by the public authorities at Dantzic, who, in the seventeenth century, caused an able mechanician, who had invented a superior kind of ribbon-loom, to be strangled.[1162]

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Footnote 1160:

Strab. ap. Beckmann, History of Inventions, i. 198.

Footnote 1161:

Satyr. c. 51, p. 25, seq. Burm. Plin. xxxvi. 66.

Footnote 1162:

Beckmann, iii, 494.

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CHAPTER VI. INDUSTRY: OIL AND COLOUR MEN.—ITALIAN WAREHOUSES.—DRUGGISTS.—COLLECTORS OF SIMPLES.

There was, moreover, produced in Greece, a number of articles, whether of use or luxury, to the venders of which it appears difficult to appropriate a name. It must necessarily be inferred, however, that there existed a class of shopkeepers analogous to our oil and colour men, at whose establishments were found most or all of the following commodities: every kind of vegetable oil, for cookery, painting, or to be burned as lamp-oil, of sea salt, probably for medicinal purposes,[1163] oil of horseradish,[1164] used instead of the root itself, as a condiment. Among the lamp-oils it is worthy of observation that the Greeks included castor oil[1165] which was commonly, from its nauseous effects, eschewed as a medicine. Bitumen[1166] also was occasionally burnt in lamps. Their lampwicks were ordinarily of rushes,[1167] which they sometimes anointed with the oil expressed from the seeds of the myagrum perenne;[1168] and from certain nuts found on the oak they obtained a sort of woolly substance[1169] which, being twisted into wicks, burnt freely without oil. The dried stem of the torch-weed[1170] was likewise employed for this purpose. Their flambeaux consisted originally of slips of the pine or pitch tree,[1171] or even as at Rhodes of the bark of the vine,[1172] but afterwards certain combustible compositions were burned in painted and ornamented handles.[1173]

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Footnote 1163:

Aristoph. Problem. xxiii. 15.

Footnote 1164:

Ῥαφανέλαιον. Dioscor. i. 45.

Footnote 1165:

Κίκινον ἔλαιον.—Κικι, οἱ δὲ σήσαμον ἄγριον, οἱ δὲ, σέσελι Κύπριον. Dioscor. iv. 164.

Footnote 1166:

Dioscor. i. 99. Cf. Herod. 179.

Footnote 1167:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 60. Athen. x. 25.

Footnote 1168:

Dioscor. iv. 117.

Footnote 1169:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 4. Plin. xviii. 10.

Footnote 1170:

Poll. i. 229, seq.

Footnote 1171:

The same torch is still in use in Circassia. J. S. Bell, Journal of a residence in Circassia, ii. 69.

Footnote 1172:

Athen. xvi. 61. Cf. Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 48. t. i. p. 343.

Footnote 1173:

Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 1373. Bœttiger. Fur. pl. 2. Barthelémy, Anacharsis, ii. 330. Goguet. iii. 391. Cf. Gitone, Il Costume, tav. 63. Zoëga, Bassi Rilievi, tav. 14.

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The making of pitch, generally found in these shops, was carried on in the following manner,[1174] particularly among the Macedonians: Having cleared a large level space in the forests, as when constructing a threshing-floor, they carefully paved it, and gave the whole a slope towards the centre. The billets of wood were then piled up endways as close to each other as possible, and so as that the height of the heap should always be in proportion to its magnitude. These piles were frequently of enormous dimensions, falling little short of a hundred yards in circumference and rising to the height of eighty or ninety feet. The whole mound was then covered with turf and earth; and the wood having been set on fire by means of an open passage below, which immediately afterwards was closed, numerous ladders were thrown up along its sides in order that, should the least smoke anywhere appear, fresh layers of turf and earth might be cast upon it: for if the flame found a vent the hopes of the manufacturer were destroyed. The pitch flowed off by an underground channel leading from the centre of the area to a spacious cistern sunk in the earth about twenty feet beyond the circumference of the mound, where it was suffered to cool. During two days and two nights the fire in these heaps continued generally to burn, requiring the incessant care and vigilance of the workmen, though it frequently happened that before sunset on the second day, the earthy crust flattened and fell in, the wood being reduced to ashes. This was generally preceded by the pitch ceasing to flow. The whole of this period was converted into a holiday by the labourers, who offered sacrifice to the gods, and preferred many prayers, that their pitch might be plentiful and good.

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Footnote 1174:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 3. i. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 189. 643.

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Nitre was procured from wood-ashes,[1175] as it is at this day in Circassia, from the ashes of a plant cultivated for the purpose. It has been supposed that the ancients were acquainted with gunpowder;[1176] and there appears to have been a dim tradition of artificial thunder and lightning among the Brachmanes in the remotest antiquity.[1177]

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Footnote 1175:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 6. Dutens, Orig. des Découvertes, &c. p. 183. Bell, Resid. in Circassia, ii. 30. Beckmann, ii. 434.

Footnote 1176:

Dutens, p. 194, sqq.

Footnote 1177:

Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. ii. 33. iii. 13. Themist. Orat. 27. p. 337.

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The demand for the various earths and colours was considerable; such as the Melian, a fine white marl, used by artists frequently for communicating to green paint a pale hue;[1178] the Cimolian, by fullers;[1179] and the gypsum, employed occasionally by both. The Samian, being fat and unctuous,[1180] was eschewed by painters, though it found its place among the materia medica. Another article in much request was the argol, a beautiful moss,[1181] used both by painters and dyers; to which we may add the cinnabar[1182] and the kermes, used for dying scarlet; the Indian black,[1183] indigo, ultramarine, lamp and ivory black, painter’s soot, collected from glass furnaces,[1184] verdigris, ceruse, and minium, used in painting vases and clay statues.[1185] Other substances which sometimes entered into the materials of painters were, the sandarach[1186] and the orpiment, found in gold, silver, and copper mines, ochre, ruddle, and chrysocolla. Ruddle was successfully imitated by burnt ochre, the manufacturing of which was the invention of Cydias,[1187] who having observed that a quantity of ochre found in a house which was burnt down had assumed a red colour, profited by the hint, though the article thus produced was inferior to the natural. The Lemnian earth,[1188] having been mixed with goats’ blood, kneaded into small round pastilles, and stamped with the figure of a goat, was vended, partly as a medicine, partly to be used in sacrifice. In the same shops, doubtless, sealing-wax and ink were sold.[1189] The receipt for preparing the latter was as follows:[1190] to an ounce of gum they added three ounces of pine-torch or resin soot, or even that which was obtained from the glass furnaces, and used, as above observed, by painters. In this latter case, a mina of soot was mingled with a pound and a half of gum, and an ounce and a half of bull’s glue and copperas-water. An infusion of wormwood[1191] was sometimes used in the manufacture of ink, which preserved the manuscripts written with it from being gnawed by rats or other vermin. Another method was, to smear the parchment with saffron and cedar oil.[1192]

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Footnote 1178:

Dioscor. v. 180. Theoph. de Lapid. § 63.

Footnote 1179:

Dioscor. v. 176. Beckmann, iii. 245. Theoph. de Lap. § 62. Plin. xxxv. 56, seq.

Footnote 1180:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 62, seq. Plin. xxviii. 53. 77. xxxi. 46.

Footnote 1181:

Beckmann, i. 60.

Footnote 1182:

Dioscor. v. 109. Theoph. de Lap. 58.

Footnote 1183:

Beckmann, iv. 120. 111. 117.

Footnote 1184:

Dioscor. v. 182.

Footnote 1185:

Suid. v. κωλιάδος κεραμῆες, t. i. p. 1511. b. Paus. vi. 26. 11. Herodot. iv. 191. 194. vii. 68, who says, it was also used by certain people in painting their bodies.

Footnote 1186:

Dioscor. v. 122. 121. On the earths and ochres of the ancients, see Sir Humphrey Davy, in the Philosophical Transactions, 1815, pt. i. p. 97, seq.

Footnote 1187:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 53.

Footnote 1188:

Dioscor. v. 113. Plin. xxviii. 24. xxix. 33. xxxv. 14.

Footnote 1189:

Luc. Alexand. § 21.

Footnote 1190:

Dioscor. v. 183. i. 93. Plin. xxxv. 25.

Footnote 1191:

Dioscor. iii. 26.

Footnote 1192:

Luc. adv. Indoct. § 16. By the odour of this oil the books of Numa were said, by tradition, to have been preserved for many generations. “Mirabantur alii, quomodo illi libri durare potuissent: ille (Hemina) ita rationem reddebat: lapidem fuisse quadratum circiter in mediâ arcâ vinctum candelis quoquo versus. In eo lapide insuper libros impositos fuisse, propterea arbitrari eos non computruisse. Et libros cedratos fuisse: propterea arbitrarier tineas non tetigisse.” Plin. Nat. Hist. xiii. 27. To the virtues of this oil Vitruvius also bears testimony. “Quæ unguntur cedrio, ut libri à tineis et carie non læduntur.” ii. 9. In the above passage of Pliny, Hardouin reads “libros citratos,” and supposes the naturalist to mean that citron-leaves were folded in the manuscript: “quorum hæc propria dos, ut arceant animalium noxia, hoc est, tineas.” Cf. Plin. Nat. Hist. xii. 7. But as the citron was not introduced into Greece or Italy until several centuries after the age of Numa, it is very clear that “cedratos” must remain in the text of Pliny.

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Next to these, perhaps, should be ranged those shops which resembled our Italian warehouses, where the gourmands of antiquity procured their best vinegar, pickles, and sauces.[1193] To enumerate all the articles found in such an establishment would be somewhat difficult; but we may observe that they sold, among other things, the best Colophonian mustard,[1194] pepper,[1195] together with all the substitutes occasionally used for it, such as the Syrian nard,[1196] water-pepper,[1197] and, among the ancient Italians, lovage of Lombardy,[1198] garlic heads,[1199] a mixture of salt and thyme,[1200] pickled olives, and cornel-berries, to be eaten at table, pickled dittander,[1201] mountain rue,[1202] snakeweed or wake-robin, fennel or chervil, tendrils of the wild vine,[1203] eringo root, sea-heath, cammock, lettuces and parsley.[1204] To these may be added silphion, sesame, citron-peel, cumin, wild marjoram, capers, cresses, and fig-leaves.[1205] Among the Syrians, the root and seeds of the sison-amomum were used as spices, and pickled with sliced gourds.[1206] The Arabs, we are told, seasoned their dishes with the leaf of the ginger plant.[1207] Ginger-root was likewise known and used as a condiment in Greece.

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Footnote 1193:

Diog. Laert. ii. 31. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 192. 643. Athen. ii. 75, seq. Dioscor. v. 21. Plat. De Rep. vi. p. 404.

Footnote 1194:

Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 629.

Footnote 1195:

Ἀνώδυνον τε ἐστὶ καὶ ὑγιείνον· καὶ ὄρεξιν κίνει. Dioscor. ii. 189.

Footnote 1196:

Δράβη. Dioscor. ii. 187.

Footnote 1197:

Id. ii. 191.

Footnote 1198:

Λιγυστικὸν. Dioscor. iii. 58.

Footnote 1199:

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 680.

Footnote 1200:

Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 737. Athen. ii. 45.

Footnote 1201:

Dioscor. ii. 205.

Footnote 1202:

Id. iii. 53.

Footnote 1203:

Id. ii. 167.

Footnote 1204:

Poll. vi. 61.

Footnote 1205:

Athen. ii. 76. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 891.

Footnote 1206:

Dioscor. iii. 34.

Footnote 1207:

Id. ii. 190.

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Although, properly speaking, there may, in early times, have been no such trades as those of the druggist and the apothecary, there very soon arose a class of men who nearly resembled them, though professing to practise medicine.[1208] Into the shops of those persons we shall now beg leave to enter, and observe some few of the materials with which the children of Æsculapius preserved or destroyed the health of the Greeks. The art of medicine itself, as it existed among them, I shall not venture to examine, abandoning that part of the subject to the investigation of professional men.[1209]

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Footnote 1208:

Beckmann, History of Inventions, ii. 122, sqq.

Footnote 1209:

See, on this subject, Dissen. ad Pind. Pyth. iii. 47. 51. I may here, however, by the way, remark, that while the free citizens were attended by physicians of their own rank, there were likewise servile practitioners who prescribed for the diseases of slaves. Plat. De Leg. iv. t. vii. p. 362, seq. Cf. Poll. iv. 177, sqq.

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The interior of an ancient surgery, though it may have been less lavishly furnished than one of our own day, made, nevertheless, some pretensions to show. There were, for example, ranged in order on shelves, numerous medicine chests of ivory; brass and silver cupping instruments,[1210] lancet-cases, and cases inlaid with gold.[1211] Flowers and aromatic plants were laid up in boxes of the wood of the linden tree, while seeds were preserved in paper or leaves. Liquid medicines were kept in vessels of silver, glass, or horn, or even in earthenware jars, provided they were well glazed. For these they sometimes substituted vases of boxwood, though those of metal were generally preferred, at least for all such as were intended for the eyes, or contained vinegar, pitch, or cedar juice. Lard, marrow, and all similar substances, were put into vessels of pewter.[1212] The instruments[1213] in most common use besides the bistoury, were the forceps, the scissors, the hypographs, the ear-pick, the probe,[1214] the needle, the scalpel, the tooth-file, the tooth-wrench, the eueidion, and the podostrabe, an instrument for reducing luxations. We ought, likewise, perhaps, to mention the bandages, ligatures, swathes, plaisters, lint, amulets, and bleeding-bowls.[1215]

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Footnote 1210:

Aristot. Poet. c. 22, Rhet. iii. 2.

Footnote 1211:

Luc. adv. Indoct. § 29.

Footnote 1212:

Dioscor. proœm. p. 4.

Footnote 1213:

On the primitive instruments of surgery see Goguet, Origine des Loix. t. ii. p. 17.

Footnote 1214:

Beckmann, History of Inventions, iii. 160.

Footnote 1215:

Poll. iv. 181.

-----

Their knowledge of the materia medica was acquired for the most part by experience, though there existed, previously to the time of Hippocrates, works on the virtues of plants, among which we may mention that of Cratevas. By degrees these treatises were greatly multiplied, and included, at length, a species of encyclopedia, arranged in alphabetical order;[1216] though not one single fragment of it has been spared by time. At first, and for many ages, the art relied chiefly upon simples, the qualities of which were consequently studied with great ardour, and, no doubt, with much success. Numerous individuals devoted themselves to the gathering, drying, and preserving, of medicinal roots and herbs, an occupation requiring considerable time and labour,—for which reasons the physicians, by whom it was originally performed, soon abandoned it to the rizotomists.

-----

Footnote 1216:

Dioscorides, however, who mentions this work, is far from speaking of the plan with praise: ἥμαρτον δὲ καὶ περὶ τὴν τάξιν· οἱ μὲν ἀσυμφύλους δυνάμεις συγκρούσαντεσ· οἱ δὲ κατὰ στοιχεῖα ἀναγράψαντες. διέζευξαν τῆς ὁμογενείας τὰ τε γένη καὶ τὰς ἐνεργείας αὐτῶν, ὡς διὰ τοῦτο ἀσυμμνημόνευτα γίνεσθαι. Proœm. p. 2.

-----

But the business of collecting simples, by whomsoever performed, required great knowledge and perseverance. The individuals who carried it on spread themselves, at the proper seasons of the year, through all Greece, more especially over Mount Pelion in Thessaly, Telethra in Eubœa, Parnassos in Phocis, and the uplands of Laconia and Arcadia,[1217] making inquiries, as they went along, of the inhabitants of every district and canton respecting the medicaments in use among them, and collecting from the mouths of peasants and shepherds the fruits of their limited but close observation. They passed, as a matter of course, the greater part of their lives in the fields, studying the topography and distribution of plants, and investigating all the phenomena of vegetation. They believed, that herbs vary in virtues and powers according as they are found in mountains or in valleys, in places overrun with moisture, and where the air is rank and heavy, or on spots swelling and exposed, where they are fanned and invigorated by every breeze that blows. They laid much stress, too, on the season of the year, on the weather, and on the hour of the day; some simples requiring, it was supposed, to be gathered when the sun has exhaled from them all extraneous moisture, others before its rising, others amid the darkness of night when their leaves and flowers were suffused with dew. They were guided, likewise, in their operations by other rules, some founded on experience, others originating in fancy and superstition. In culling, for example, the thapsia[1218] and several other herbs, they were careful, having first anointed themselves with oil, to stand with their backs to the wind, persuaded that they otherwise should inhale certain noxious effluvia which would cause their whole bodies to swell, or, in the case of the dog-rose,[1219] that their sight would be impaired.

-----

Footnote 1217:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 15. 3, sqq.

Footnote 1218:

Dioscor. iv. 157. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 5.

Footnote 1219:

Κυνόσβατον. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 5.

-----

Those who gathered the mountain rue,[1220] anointed their faces and hands with oil, to guard themselves against cutaneous inflammation. Again, of other herbs the juices are so pungent as to burn like fire: these were collected in the greatest haste. In digging the hellebore,[1221] too, the odour of which was supposed rapidly to affect the brain, they proceeded with great celerity, and were careful to eat a clove or two of garlic beforehand, and to drink a little pure wine after. But all these precautions were trifling compared with those which the good rizotomists had persuaded themselves were indispensable in collecting the peony flower.[1222] About this operation they interwove a sort of netting of romance: it was to be undertaken they affirmed by night, lest the woodpeckers, who regarded it with as much jealousy as the Indian ants do their gold, should fall upon the unfortunate herbalists, and with their sharp beaks pluck out their eyes. So, likewise, in gathering the centaury they were to stand on their guard lest they should be assaulted and maltreated by the hawks. Considering all these numerous evils which rizotomist flesh was heir to, Theophrastus thinks it by no means absurd, that when issuing forth on an enterprise so perilous, they should have fortified their nerves with many prayers. Some few, however, of their practices the philosopher condemns as a trifle beyond the mark, as for example when in digging the root of the Asclepian all-heal, they judged it necessary to propitiate mother earth by burying in its stead a cake composed of many various sweets. And again in unearthing the root of the iris fœtidissima, they interred a cake of spring wheat mixed with honey, not, however, before they had drawn round the spot a treble circle with a two-edged sword. When they had obtained possession of one of the roots, they held it up for some time in the air, and then proceeded to procure a second, and so on. Strangest of all, however, were the ceremonies observed in digging the mandrake.[1223] First, the triple magic circle was inscribed on the earth with a sword, then the pious rizotomist turned his face toward the west, and began to use his knife, while a second operator went dancing round, uttering all kinds of amorous incantations. Still more perilous was the gathering of the black hellebore, which they performed with the face towards the east, and many prayers to Apollo and Asclepios.[1224] The strictest watch was meanwhile to be kept, that no eagle appeared above the horizon; for if the eye of this king of birds happened to fall upon the herbalist while engaged in digging, he would infallibly die within the year.[1225]

-----

Footnote 1220:

Dioscor. iii. 53.

Footnote 1221:

King Attalus, desirous not to have far to reach in the matter of poisons, cultivated a great variety of them with his own hands in the royal gardens, such as hyoscyamus, hellebore, hemlock, aconite, and dorycnion, of whose virtue and qualities he obtained a thorough knowledge by experiments. Plut. Demet. § 20.

Footnote 1222:

Παιωνία. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 6.

Footnote 1223:

Μανδράγορας. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 8.

Footnote 1224:

Dioscor. iv. 151.

Footnote 1225:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 5, sqq. The spleen-wort, (ἀσπλήνον) when designed to produce sterility was collected on a dark night: ἀσελήνου δὲ νύκτος φασι δεῖν αὐτὴν ὀρύσσειν εἰς ἀτόκιον. Dioscor. iii. 151.

-----

After all these toilsome and dangerous enterprises it was natural that the rizotomists should desire to enjoy some advantages,[1226] which, accordingly, they procured themselves by selling dear their hard-won prizes to their equally superstitious countrymen. Making no pretension as I have said to describe the regular medical practice among the Greeks, I shall here, nevertheless, introduce some few particulars more or less connected with it, which may be regarded as characteristic of the age and people.[1227] Great were the virtues which they ascribed to the herb alysson, (biscutella didyma,) which, being pounded and eaten with meat, cured hydrophobia. Nay, more, being suspended in a house, it promoted the health of its inhabitants;[1228] it protected likewise both man and cattle from enchantment; and, bound in a piece of scarlet flannel round the necks of the latter, it preserved them from all diseases.

-----

Footnote 1226:

Cf. Poll. iv. 177.

Footnote 1227:

See a witty disquisition on charms in Luc. Philopseud. § 7, and a list of medicinal plants introduced into remedies for the gout. Tragopodag. 138, seq.

Footnote 1228:

Dioscor. iii. 105. Another mode of repelling contagious disorders was to cause verses to be written by soothsayers on the door. Luc. Alexand. § 36. Fevers were also cured in some places by touching miraculous statues, as that of the wrestler Polydamas at Olympia, or that of Theagenes, at Thasos. Deor. Concil. § 12. A sea-onion was planted before dwelling houses as a charm. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 13. 4.

-----

Coriander-seed,[1229] eaten in too great quantity, produced, they thought, a derangement of the intellect. Ointment of saffron had an opposite effect, for the nostrils and heads of lunatics being rubbed therewith they were supposed to receive considerable relief.[1230] Melampos the goatherd was reported to have cured the daughters of Prætos[1231] of their madness by large doses of black hellebore, which thereafter received from him the name of Melampodion. Sea-onions[1232] suspended over the doors preserved from enchantment, as did likewise a branch of rhamnus over doors or windows.[1233] A decoction of rosemary[1234] and of the leaves and stem of the anemone[1235] was administered to nurses to promote the secretion of milk, and a like potion prepared from the leaves of the Cretan dittany[1236] was given to women in labour. This herb, in order to preserve its virtues unimpaired, and that it might be the more easily transported to all parts of the country, was preserved in a joint of a ferula or reed. A plaster of incense,[1237] Cimolian earth, and oil of roses, was applied to reduce the swelling of the breasts. A medicine prepared from mule’s fern,[1238] was believed to produce sterility, as were likewise the waters of a certain fountain near Pyrrha, while to those about Thespiæ a contrary effect was attributed, as well as to the wine of Heraclea in Arcadia.[1239] The inhabitants of this primitive region drank milk as an aperient[1240] in the spring, because of the medicinal herbs on which the cattle were then supposed to feed. Medicines of laxative properties were prepared from the juice of the wild cucumber, which were said to retain their virtues for two hundred years,[1241] though simples in general were thought to lose their medicinal qualities in less than four.[1242] The oriental gum called kankamon was administered in water or honeyed vinegar to fat persons to diminish their obesity, and also as a remedy for the toothache.[1243] For this latter purpose the gum of the Ethiopian olive[1244] was put into the hollow tooth, though more efficacy perhaps was attributed to the root of dittander[1245] which they suspended as a charm about the neck. A plaster of the root of the white thorn[1246] or iris[1247] roots prepared with flour of copper, honey, and great centaury, drew out thorns and arrowheads without pain. An unguent procured from fern[1248] was sold to rustics for curing the necks of their cattle galled by the yoke. A decoction of marsh-mallow leaves[1249] and wine or honeyed vinegar was administered to persons who had been stung by bees or wasps or other insects;[1250] bites and burns were healed by an external application of the leaf smeared with oil, and the powdered roots cast into water caused it to freeze if placed out during the night in the open air; an unguent was prepared with oil from reeds, green or dry, which protected those who anointed themselves with it, from the stings of venomous reptiles. Cinnamon unguent,[1251] or terebinth and myrtle-berries,[1252] boiled in wine, were supposed to be a preservative against the bite of the tarantula or scorpion, as was the pistachio nut against that of serpents.[1253] Some persons ate a roasted scorpion to cure its own bite;[1254] a powder, moreover, was prepared from sea-crabs supposed to be fatal to this reptile.[1255] Vipers[1256] were made to contribute their part to the materia medica; for, being caught alive, they were enclosed with salt and dried figs in a vase which was then put into a furnace till its contents were reduced to charcoal, which they esteemed a valuable medicine. A considerable quantity of viper’s flesh was in the last century imported from Egypt into Venice, to be used in the composition of medicinal treacle.[1257] From the flowers of the sneezewort,[1258] a sort of snuff appears to have been manufactured, though probably used only in medicines. The ashes of old leather[1259] cured burns, galls, and blistered feet.

-----

Footnote 1229:

Dioscor. iii. 71.

Footnote 1230:

Δύναμιν δὲ ἔχει (κρόκινον) θερμαντικὴν, ὑπνωτικὴν, ὅθεν πολλάκις ἐπὶ φρενετικῶν ἁρμόζει καταβρεχόμενον, ἢ ἀποσφραινόμενον, ἦ καὶ κατα μυζωτηρων διαχριόμενον. Dioscor. i. 64.

Footnote 1231:

Dioscor. iv. 151. Apollod. ii. 2. 2.

Footnote 1232:

Luc. Alexan. § 47. Dioscor. ii. 202.

Footnote 1233:

Dioscor. i. 119.

Footnote 1234:

Λιβανωτις. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 11. 10. Dioscor. iii. 87. “In insulis Græcis rariùs in Melo legit.” Sibth. Flor. Græc. tab. 14. “In Zacintho, nec non in Bœotia.” D. Hawkins.

Footnote 1235:

Dioscor. ii. 207.

Footnote 1236:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 16. 1.

Footnote 1237:

Dioscor. i. 81. Cf. Cels. ii. 33. Pills of wax were given to nurses to prevent the thickening of the milk. Dioscor. ii. 105. We have already remarked on the exuberance of milk in Greek women. Nevertheless the opinion prevailed that one nurse could not suckle two children: οὐδὲ δύο βρέφη ὑπὸ τροφοῦ μιᾶς ἐκτρεφόμενα Geopon. v. 13. 4. The stone Galactites was worn round the neck by superstitious nurses in order to increase their milk. Plin. viii. 16. xxxvii. 10. Vigenère, Imagen. de Philostrate, p. 576.

Footnote 1238:

Ἡμιόνιον. Theoph. Hist. | Plant. ix. 18. 7.

Footnote 1239:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 18. 10.

Footnote 1240:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 15. 4. The belief was prevalent, however, that milk at all times was a species of medicine. Thus when Timagoras accepted, among other things, eighty cows from the king of Persia, with herdsmen to take care of them, he pretended that he had need of their milk on account of the delicacy of his health: ὧς δὴ πρὸς ἀῤῥωστίαν τινὰ γάλακτος βοείου δεόμενος. Plut. Pelopid. § 30.

Footnote 1241:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 14. 1.

Footnote 1242:

Dioscor. in proœm. p. 4.

Footnote 1243:

Dioscor. i. 23.

Footnote 1244:

Id. i. 141.

Footnote 1245:

Id. ii. 205.

Footnote 1246:

Id. i. 122.

Footnote 1247:

Ξυρὶς, Iris fœtidissima. Dioscor. iv. 22.

Footnote 1248:

Πτέρις. Dioscor. iv. 186.

Footnote 1249:

Dioscor. iii. 163. A plaster of fresh laurel leaves was thought to produce the same effect. i. 106.

Footnote 1250:

As a protection against musquitos the Greeks we find were accustomed to anoint their bodies with oil which had been flavoured with wormwood. Dioscor. iii. 26.

Footnote 1251:

Dioscor. i. 13.

Footnote 1252:

Id. i. 91. 155.

Footnote 1253:

Id. i. 177.

Footnote 1254:

Id. ii. 13.

Footnote 1255:

Id. ii. 12.

Footnote 1256:

Id. ii. 18.

Footnote 1257:

Hazelquist, Travels, p. 221.

Footnote 1258:

Πταρμικὴ. Dioscor. ii. 192.

Footnote 1259:

Τὰ δὲ ἀπο τῶν καττυμάτων παλαιὰ δέρματα, κεκαυμένα καὶ λεία καταπλασσόμενα, πυρίκαυστα καὶ παρατρίμματα καὶ τὰ ἐξ ὑποδημάτων θλίμματα θεραπεύει. Dioscor. ii. 51.

-----

The common remedy when persons had eaten poisonous mushrooms was a dose of nitre exhibited in vinegar and water;[1260] with water it was esteemed a cure for the sting of the burncow, and with benzoin it operated as an antidote against the poison of bulls’ blood. The seeds of mountain-rue, in small quantities, were regarded as an antidote, but, administered too copiously, were themselves lethal.[1261] White hellebore was employed with honey and other medicines to poison rats;[1262] bastard saffron,[1263] mice, pigs, and dogs; which last were physicked with hellebore.[1264] The deadly qualities of this plant, when taken in any quantity, were universally known, and, therefore, the pharmacopolist, Thrasyas,[1265] of Mantinea, who boasted of having invented a poison which would kill without pain, attained the credit of possessing something like miraculous powers, because he used frequently, in the presence of many witnesses to eat a whole root, or even two, of hellebore. One day, however, a shepherd, coming into his shop, utterly destroyed his reputation; for, in the sight of all present, he devoured a whole handful, observing that it was nothing at all, for that he and his brethren on the mountains were accustomed to do as much, and more, daily.[1266] They had, in fact, discovered, that medicine is no medicine, and poison no poison, to those with whose bodies they have been assimilated by use. When limbs were to be amputated, and previous to the application of the cautery, a dose of powdered mandragora-root was usually administered.

-----

Footnote 1260:

Dioscor. v. 130.

Footnote 1261:

Id. iii. 53.

Footnote 1262:

Dioscor. iv. 150.

Footnote 1263:

Χαμαιλέων λευκὸς ... ἀποκτείνει καὶ κύνας καὶ ὗας καὶ μύας, σὺν ἀλφίτῳ πεφυραμένη, καὶ ὑδρελαίῳ διεθεῖσα. Dioscor. iii. 10.

Footnote 1264:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 8. 4.

Footnote 1265:

Theophrast. Hist. Plant. ix. 16. 7, seq. Cf. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. l. i. p. 17. b.

Footnote 1266:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 17. 1.

-----

On the nature, power, and uses, of ancient poisons, it is not my purpose to enlarge.[1267] It may be proper, however, to observe, that they had discovered drugs which would kill secretly, and at almost any given time from the moment of administering them. They, by certain preparations of aconite,[1268] so called from Aconè, a village in the country of the Mariandynians, the professional poisoners could take off an individual at any fixed period, from two months to two years. The possession, however, of this poison was in itself a capital offence.[1269] It was usually administered in wine or hydromel, where its presence was not to be detected by the taste. At first, there was supposed to exist no remedy, so that all who took it inevitably perished; but, at length, physicians, and even the common people of the country, discovered more than one antidote prepared from the ground-pine,[1270] from honey, and from the juice of the grape. Another poison, evidently in frequent use, was the bulb of the meadow-saffron (colchicum autumnale), which being known to everybody, and nearly always at hand, slaves[1271] were said to have plucked and eaten when enraged against their masters; but, repenting presently, they used, with still greater celerity, to rush in search of an antidote. Some persons, anxious to fortify their children against the effects of all noxious drugs, were in the habit of administering to them as soon as born a small dose of the powder of bindweed,[1272] which they believed to possess the power of protecting them for ever. When persons were invited out to dine where they ran the risk of meeting with ratsbane in their dishes, it was customary to chew a little calamint before the repast.[1273] In the case of the canine species the Argives, instead of having recourse to poison, like their neighbours, used to celebrate an annual festival during the dog-days, in which they seem to have slaughtered[1274]

Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And cur of low degree,

the moist atmosphere of their city having been peculiarly liable to engender hydrophobia.

-----

Footnote 1267:

See on Scythian slow poison, Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 15. 2. Among the Romans the lepus marinus (the aplysia depilens of Linnæus) was sometimes used as a secret poison, as we find from the example of Domitian, who employed it in removing his brother Titus. Δυοὶν δὲ ἐτοῖν μετὰ τὸν πατέρα τὴν ἀρχὴν κατασχόντα, ὑπὸ τοῦ θαλαττίου λαγὼ ἀποθανεῖν. τὸν δὲ ἰχθὺν τοῦτον, παρέχεσθαι χυμοὺς ἀποῤῥήτους, ὑπὲρ πάντα τὰ ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ καὶ γῇ ἀνδροφόνα. καὶ Νέρωνα μὲν ἐμποιῆσαι τοῖς ἐαυτου ὄψοις τὸν λαγὼν τοῦτον ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμιωτάτους, Δομετιανὸν δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Τῖτον, οὐ τὸ ξὺν ἀδελφῷ ἄρχειν δεινὸν ἡγούμενον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ξὺν πράῳ τε καὶ χρηστῷ. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. vi. 32, p. 271. The baneful qualities of this fish are noticed, likewise, by Dioscorides, Alexipharm. 30; by Ælian. de Nat. Animal. ii. 45. xvi. 19, and by Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 72. xxxii. 3.

Footnote 1268:

Cf. Beckmann, i. 82.

Footnote 1269:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 16. 7.

Footnote 1270:

Dioscor. iii. 175.

Footnote 1271:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. ix. 16. 6.

Footnote 1272:

Dioscor. iv. 144.

Footnote 1273:

Id. iii. 43.

Footnote 1274:

Athen. iii. 56. There appears to be no other authority for this custom. Cf. Meurs. Græc. Feriat. iv. p. 183. The poison of a mad dog’s bite was exhausted by the cupping-glass. Celsus, v. 27. 2.

-----

Among the more remarkable of the materia medica was the cedar gum, generally transparent, and of a most pungent odour. It was esteemed destructive of living bodies, but formed, doubtless, an important ingredient among the embalmer’s materials, since it completely preserved corpses from corruption, on which account it was sometimes called the Life of the Dead.[1275] It entered, moreover, into preparation designed to sharpen the sight.

-----

Footnote 1275:

Δύναμιν δὲ ἔχει σηπτικὴν μὲν τῶν ἐμψύχων, φυλακτικὴν δὲ τῶν νεκρῶν σωμάτων. ὄθεν καὶ νεκροῦ ζωήν τινες αὐτὴν ἐκάλεσαν. Dioscor. i. 105.

-----

The gum obtained from the cherry-tree[1276] was administered in wine and water to promote appetite. A dose of saffron and boiled wine restored the tone of the stomach after excess at table. Asses’ milk was habitually given to consumptive patients, connected with which practice there is an apothegm of Demosthenes, which may be worth repeating. When he was once exerting himself to prevail on some foreign state to ally itself with Athens, an orator in opposition observed, that the Athenians were like asses’ milk, whose presence always indicated sickness in the places they visited. “It is true,” replied Demosthenes, “but the sickness previously exists, and they come to cure it.” A mixture of salt and water, to which the Egyptians added the juice of the radish,[1277] constituted a very common emetic. Opium was in general use even so early, apparently, as the age of Homer,[1278] who seems to have celebrated it under the name of nepenthè. The Spartan soldiers appear to have made considerable use of the poppy-head;[1279] but whether for the same purpose as the Rajpoots of modern India, I do not pretend to determine. Persons desirous of obtaining frightful and dismal dreams[1280] could always gratify their wishes by eating leaks or lentils, or the seeds of the great bind-weed,[1281] mixed with dorycnion. We may mention by the way, that the ancients understood well the doctrine of the circulation of the blood.[1282]

-----

Footnote 1276:

Dioscor. i. 157.

Footnote 1277:

Συρμαία, Poll. i. 247.

Footnote 1278:

Odyss. δ. 221. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxi. 21. Dutens, p. 183. From a passage in Herodotus there seems reason to suspect, that certain Asiatic nations were already in his time acquainted with the inebriating effects of opium smoke. For, describing the inhabitants of the larger islands found in the Araxes, he relates that they were accustomed to gather together round a fire, and casting the fruit of some unknown tree into the flames to inhale with delight the smoke and effluvia emitted by it, until they experienced all the delight and madness of intoxication, which impelled them to leap about, and dance and sing. i. 202. Among the Scythians, moreover, we find in the same author distinct traces of the use of beng, or hemp-seed. iv. 75.

Footnote 1279:

Thucyd. iv. 26. Celsus, ii. 32. Dioscor. iv. 65.

Footnote 1280:

Dioscor. ii. 129. 179.

Footnote 1281:

Σμίλαξ λεία. Dioscor. iv. 145.

Footnote 1282:

Poll. ii. 46. 214. 216. Plat. Tim. t. vii p. 19, seq. 89, seq. 98.

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CHAPTER VII. INDUSTRY: WEAVERS, GLOVERS, SOCK-MAKERS, CORDWAINERS, TANNERS, HATTERS, DYERS OF PURPLE, ETC., FISHERMEN.

In spinning and weaving the ancients evidently rivalled us, though without the aid of machinery. As far, indeed, as the former process is concerned, no machinery can rival the human hand, which, from its slight oily exudation[1283] is enabled to communicate superior strength and evenness to the finest threads. Thus in Hindustân muslins were formerly produced, which, laid on the grass and wetted by dew, became invisible.[1284] And there is no reason for doubting that the produce of ancient Greek looms rivalled those of Dakka. The fabrics of Cos[1285] and Tarentum appear, in fact, from the testimony of the ancients, to have floated like a snowy mist around the female form, disclosing its whole contour like a gauze veil.[1286] In flowered and variegated tissues,[1287] too, they attained extraordinary excellence. The finest and most brilliant shot stuffs imitating the breast of the dove, flowered cloth of gold, and the weaving of gold wire itself, were known to the ancients. Silk, before that of China[1288] was common in the west, they obtained from the beard of a sea shell; and lawn and cambric and open work, like Brussels or Valenciennes lace, were familiar to them.

-----

Footnote 1283:

The whole of the manufacture in India is by hand-spinning, consequently there is a greater tension, from the moisture which the hand gives them, than can be had from anything in the shape of machinery; a fine yarn can be produced by hand-spinning “from a short staple, which frame-spinning will not touch at all.” Report from the Lords, July 8, 1830, p. 316.

Footnote 1284:

Tavernier relates, “that the ambassador of Shah Sefi, on his return from India, presented his master with a cocoa-nut, set with jewels, containing a muslin turban, sixty covits, or thirty English yards, in length, so exquisitely fine, that it could scarcely be felt by the touch.” The Hindoos, vol. i. p. 188.

Footnote 1285:

Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 498.

Footnote 1286:

Athen. xii. 23. Aristoph. Lysist. 48. Poll. vii. 76.

Footnote 1287:

To these an allusion is made in the following passage of Plato: ὥσπερ ἱμάτιον ποικίλον πᾶσιν ἄνθεσι πεποικιλμένον, οὕτω καὶ αὔτη πᾶσιν ἤθεσι πεποικιλμένη καλλίστη ἂν φαίνοιτο. De Repub. viii. t. vi. p. 401. Cf. Poll. iii. 34. Winkelmann, i. 500. Athen. ii. 30.

Footnote 1288:

Paus. vi. 266, sqq. Aristoph. Hist. Animal. v. 19, p. 138. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 26, seq. Gibbon, t. vii. p. 90, seq. Dapper, p. 266.

-----

Being ignorant of who was the inventor of the art of weaving, they attributed the honour to Athena, who imparted a knowledge of it to Arachnè,[1289] a virgin of Mæonia, afterwards changed into a spider. But spiders were not long the only weavers among the Hellenes, who speedily invented the upright and horizontal looms, which, in after times at least, were constructed from the wood of the andrachnè.[1290]

-----

Footnote 1289:

Goguet, i. 266. Plut. Nic. § 9.

Footnote 1290:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 7. The stem of the bastard-saffron (κνῆκος) was used as a spindle by the women of remote antiquity. vi. 14. 3.

-----

Among the finest and most elegant fabrics of Greece were those manufactured in the Achæan city of Patræ,[1291] where the women being twice as numerous as the men, would alone appear to have worked in the factories, from which the greater number of the inhabitants, doubtless, derived their livelihood. The flax, from which the fine linen and head-nets[1292] of this town were made, was not grown in the neighbourhood, but in the plains of Elis,[1293] where alone, in Greece, the plant attained the highest degree of perfection, not yielding in fineness to the best produced in India, while it was possessed of superior whiteness.[1294] The fine cloths manufactured from it sold for their weight in gold.[1295] Another species of very fine flax was cultivated in the island of Amorgos,[1296] where were likewise manufactured linens of the most beautiful texture, frequently dyed purple, on which account the word Amorgis[1297] has sometimes been supposed to denote a purple stuff, though the fabrics of the island were as often white as of any other colour. In imitation of the Egyptians, they wove a sort of fine napkins, which were evidently used in the same manner as our pocket-handkerchiefs.[1298]

-----

Footnote 1291:

Pausan. vii. 21. 14. Cf. Dutens, Origine des Découvertes, p. 285. Herod. ii. 105.

Footnote 1292:

Foës. Œconom. Hippoc. v. κεκρύφαλος. p. 202. These head-nets were purple among the Spartans. Athen. xv. 28. The Grecian ladies, it would appear, sometimes wore upon their heads cauls of fine skin, probably semi-transparent, which obtained the name of πομφόλυγες. Mœris, p. 206. Bekk. In a former part of this work, I have supposed this word, where it occurs in Pollux, to signify beads, because water-bubbles, which transparent beads resemble, were so called. Etym. Mag. 682. 10. Suid. v. πομφόλ. t. ii. p. 565. d. Martial alludes to the cauls above-mentioned in the following verses:

Fortior et tortos servat vesica capillos, Et mutat Latias spumâ Batavâ comas. Epigram. viii. 23. 19.

Footnote 1293:

Not as Mr. Bœckh supposes in Achaia, this name signifying Greece in general. It grew, observes Pliny, circa Elim in Achaia. Nat. Hist. xix. 4. Bœckh. i. 142.

Footnote 1294:

Paus. vi. 26. 6. v. 5. 2. vii. 21. 14. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, i. 498. Sixteen matrons wove the peplos of Hera in Elis. Meurs. Gr. Fer. iii. 130, sqq.

Footnote 1295:

Quaternis denariis scripula ejus permutata quondam, ut auri reperio. Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. 4.

Footnote 1296:

Suid. v. Ἀμοργὶς. Aristoph. Lysist. 150, et Schol. This was the rate at which silk was afterwards sold, as we learn from an anecdote of Aurelian. “Vestem holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit, neque alteri utendam dedit. Et quum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico uteretur, ille respondit, absit ut auro fila pensentur: libra enim auri tunc libra serici fuit.” Vopisc. Vit. Aurelian, cap. xlv.

Footnote 1297:

See Dapper, Description des Iles de l’Archipel. p. 184.

Footnote 1298:

For which the old man substitutes a fox’s tail. Aristoph. Eq. 906, et Schol.

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Even from hemp, very superior cloths were produced[1299] in antiquity, especially amongst the Thracians, in whose country this plant was found both in a cultivated and a wild state. It differed very little from flax, except in its superior height and thickness; and the fabrics manufactured from it were not to be distinguished from linen, save by the most experienced judges. From hair, too, they both wove and plaited a variety of garments, among which would seem to have been a sort of mantle for ladies.[1300] Sacks, too, were manufactured from the same materials, together with socks, whips, and fishing-lines. The Egyptians, we may observe by the way, wove fine cloths and sails, and made ropes, from the fibre of the papyrus plant,[1301] as the Indians did from a sort of grass or fine rush.[1302]

-----

Footnote 1299:

Poll. vii. 73. Herod. iv. 74.

Footnote 1300:

Hemst. ad Poll. x. 32. Cf. ii. 24.

Footnote 1301:

Herod. vii. 12.

Footnote 1302:

Id. iii. 98. Comm. on Poll. vii. 76.

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In the island of Cos existed, from a very early age, the art of rearing silkworms and weaving silk. As these insects, however, fed on the leaves of the pine, the ash, and the oak, the white mulberry not having been yet introduced into Greece, the silk they produced was very different in quality from that of China. The art of unwinding the cocoons and spinning the threads was invented by Pamphila, daughter of Plates,[1303] who thus became the benefactress of her country, whose fabrics were universally admired for their delicacy, fineness, and transparency, since they allowed the whole form and colour of the body to be distinguished through them, like the gauze chemises worn by the Turkish ladies in the recesses of the harem.[1304] Another kind of silk was manufactured by the ancients from the floss-like beard of the pinna marina, or silk-worm of the sea,[1305] found on the coasts of Asia Minor, Sicily, and the Balearic isles. This kind of silk was evidently, at one period, held in the highest estimation, since we find the emperors of Rome bestowing robes of it as a mark of their imperial favour on the satraps of Armenia. In modern times, however, this branch of industry has been almost totally neglected, though very warm and beautiful winter gloves and stockings are still manufactured from it at Tarento. A pair of these gloves was considered of sufficient importance to be presented as a gift to Pope Benedict the Fourteenth.[1306]

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Footnote 1303:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. v. 19. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 26.

Footnote 1304:

Lady Montague’s Works, t. ii. p. 191.

Footnote 1305:

Shaw, Travels in Barbary. Winkelmann, i. 499.

Footnote 1306:

Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art. i. 499. Æschyl. Agamem. 855.

-----

But not for lightness and fineness only were the silks and other delicate fabrics of the ancients valued. They were variegated[1307] with stripes, lozenges, the figures of birds and other animals, sprigs, flowers,[1308] and stars,[1309] inwoven into their texture, and of the most brilliant and beautiful colours.

-----

Footnote 1307:

Plut. Aristid. § 16. Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art, i. 492. Herod. vii. 67.

Footnote 1308:

Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 401.

Footnote 1309:

Athen. xiii. 45. xii. 50. Cf. Winkelmann, i. 499. Gitone, Il Costume Antico e Moderno di tutti i Popoli, t. i. p. 94. Tav. 15.

-----

Occasionally, moreover, when the ground of the whole tissue was white, a border of fanciful scrolls, leaves, and flowers, intermingling their several tints, extended round the whole robe or mantle, which was sometimes also bedropped with asterisks of gold. Their flowered silks, and cloths of various colours, were worn, not only by ladies in their dresses, but occasionally, also, by vain young men, who thus exposed themselves to the derision of the multitude. Bed-curtains, too, and the hangings of apartments[1310] were of variegated stuffs. In the manufacturing of tapestry[1311] and drapery for the statues and temples of the gods, the greatest possible magnificence and beauty were displayed. Whole years were devoted to the production of a single piece, which exhibited views of landscapes and cities, together with figures of gods, and heroes, and groups of warriors, sometimes arranged in religious processions, at other times engaged in battle, where the scene, the combatants, their armour, their weapons, and the flowing gore were represented by various colours to the life.[1312] In the manufacture of carpets, the Greeks displayed great taste and elegance, whether we regard the figures of animals, trees, or flowers, with which they were inwrought, or their pile, softness, and texture.[1313] Many times when they had not been flowered by the hand of the weaver, they were adorned by the ladies themselves with sprigs, and leaves, and figures, in embroidery; sometimes of various bright colours, at others with threads of gold.[1314] Even napkins in Egypt were embroidered with golden flowers,[1315] as both these and all kinds of handkerchiefs still are throughout the East. In Greece, the fine soft vests which warriors[1316] wore beneath their shirts of mail were usually figured with rich embroidery by the females of their family.

-----

Footnote 1310:

Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 172. Athen. xv. 42.

Footnote 1311:

Hom. Il. γ. 125, sqq.

Footnote 1312:

Cf. Hom. Il. ζ. 289. 295.

Footnote 1313:

See Book III. chap. ii.

Footnote 1314:

One of the most extraordinary productions of the Grecian loom seems to have been that magnificent chlamys which was weaving for king Demetrius at the period of his overthrow. It had been, we are told, a long time in hand, and represented in one vast picture both the face of the earth, and heaven with all its constellations. But it was never completed, none of the succeeding sovereigns of Macedon possessing the gorgeous taste of the son of Antigonos. Plut. Demet. § 41. Next perhaps to this in curious workmanship may be reckoned that rich mantle fifteen cubits in length, which the Sybarite Alcisthenes exhibited on Mount Lacinium during the festival of Hera, which was frequented by all the people of Italy. Dionysios, the elder, obtaining possession of this garment, sold it to the Carthaginians for a hundred and twenty talents. It was of a rich sea purple colour, and surrounded on all sides by a border containing the figures of animals, the upper row consisting of those of Susiana, the lower of those of Persia Proper. In the middle appeared an assembly of the gods—Zeus, Hera, Themis, Athena, Apollo, and Aphroditè. At either end stood a figure of Alcisthenes himself with a representation, probably symbolical of the city of Sybaris. All these figures were the produce of the loom, and not of the needle. Aristot. de Mirab. Auscult. t. xvi. p. 199, seq. Athen. xii. 58.

Footnote 1315:

Poll. iv. 116. Athen. ix. 79. v. 28. Herod. ii. 122. Lucian. Amor. § 36, sqq.

Footnote 1316:

Cf. Herod. vii. 61. ix. 76. 109.

-----

It appears to be generally supposed,[1317] that silver threads were not employed until a very recent period, either in weaving or embroidery;[1318] we find mention, however, in Philo Judæus,[1319] of purple coverlets inwrought with silver and gold. But at length the love of show and magnificence rose to so high a pitch, that robes were woven entirely of threads of gold.[1320] Ribbons also were manufactured of the same materials, and several fragments of these fabrics have more than once been discovered in cinerary urns at Rome, though the greediness of the finder has almost invariably led to their being melted down.[1321] At a later period stuffs were woven partly of silk or woollen and partly of gold.[1322]

-----

Footnote 1317:

By Beckmann, for example, History of Inventions, ii. 217, and Salmasius, ad Vopisc. p. 394, and ad Tertull. de Pallio, p. 208.

Footnote 1318:

Cf. Lucian. Amor. § 38, sqq.

Footnote 1319:

Ed. Mangey, ii. 478.

Footnote 1320:

Winkelmann, i. 503. Huet, Hist. of Comm. p. 33. Cf. Athen. xii. 5, sqq.

Footnote 1321:

Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, i. 503.

Footnote 1322:

Id. i. 504.

-----

Of gloves[1323] the Greeks made little use, though they must have observed very early, that they were worn by the Persians, and probably by other nations of Asia.[1324] Nay even among their own rustics they would appear to have been in fashion as far back as the heroic ages.[1325] The principal customers, therefore, of the Hellenic glovers were the hedgers and ditchers, woodmen, and actors; for on the stage it was frequently necessary to appear in gloves,[1326] either in order to disguise the colour or augment the size of the hands, or, as in the case of the Furies, to give them the appearance of being furnished with talons like those of the hippogriff.[1327]

-----

Footnote 1323:

Cf. Poll. ii. 152.

Footnote 1324:

Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 8.

Footnote 1325:

Odyss. ω. 229. Paccichelli, de Chirothecis, in p. 238.

Footnote 1326:

Luc. Jup. Tragœd. § 41.

Footnote 1327:

See an example, Mus. Chiaramont, tav. 16. Museo Real Borbonico, tav. 32. 50.

-----

Stockings properly so called, were perhaps little known to the Greeks, though we find mention made of certain socks woven from the cotonaceous filaments of a species of river truffle,[1328] which must have resembled them very closely both in form and texture. Besides, we see in works of art representations of this kind of sock reaching nearly to the knees, and somewhat loose, which may probably therefore have been woven. But the common sock, like the hat, was of felt,[1329] and usually white,[1330] fitting close to the foot and leg, and chiefly worn by women, with shoes or sandals,[1331] and sometimes in lieu of them,[1332] though in some cases it occupied the same place in the costume of the Greeks as it does in modern times.

-----

Footnote 1328:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 13. 8.

Footnote 1329:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 13. Athen. ii. 67. Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. 10. Poll. i. 148. ii. 196. Some persons wore in winter a lambskin covering for the legs and feet. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 720.

Footnote 1330:

Lucian. Rhet. Præcept. § 15.

Footnote 1331:

Schol. Aristoph. Lysist. 417. Acharn. 299.

Footnote 1332:

Constant, v. πῖλοι. Antich. di Ercol. t. ii. p. 185.

-----

The Hellenic cordwainers[1333] appear in every age to have carried on a thriving trade, since all the world, with the exception of a few philosophers, went well shod. Their workshops seem to have been neatly furnished. The shoes already made, whether plain or gilded,[1334] used to be ranged on shelves fixed up against the wall with fanciful brackets, while their lasts, pastepots, pincers, awls,[1335] and other implements, were kept in armories, sometimes furnished with double folding-doors, four or five deep shelves, and extremely elegant in form. Their cutting-boards[1336] were made from the wood of the wild pear-tree which being of a close hard grain kept their knives constantly in edge. Among the Israelites we find mention made of shoes of badger-skins.[1337]

-----

Footnote 1333:

Poll. vii. 80-96. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 299. Eq. 321. 709. Vesp. 103. Athen. iii. 56. On the Cretan Cothurn. Poll. vii. 193. v. 18. Bœttig. Les Furies, p. 35. There was an expensive sort of Ionian shoe called βαυκίδες. Etym. Mag. 192. 17. Κρηπίδες. Hieron. Mag. Miscell. iii. 3. A pair of these slippers appears to have been a day’s work, and cost in Lucian’s time seven oboloi. Somn. seu Gal. § 22. Herodotus speaks of purple buskins, vii. 76. The women of Thessaly wore wooden shoes. Athen. xiii. 55.

Footnote 1334:

Luc. adv. Indoct. § 6.

Footnote 1335:

Poll. ii. 195. x. 141. Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 35. p. 187.

Footnote 1336:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 5. 1.

Footnote 1337:

Ezekiel, xvi. 10.

-----

Of the various processes resorted to for tanning, dressing, and dyeing leather,[1338] whether to be worked up into clothing, armour, shoes, or parchment, too little by far is known. We are merely informed that, in removing the hair from hides and skins, they made use of the berries of the white briony;[1339] that, in preparing them for receiving any dye or colour, the seeds of the sumach[1340] were employed; and that the bark of the fir-tree and the wood of the alder,[1341] reduced to chips, entered into various preparations for dressing and dyeing.[1342] Fawn-skins among the Thracians were prepared probably with the hair on,[1343] for a sort of buskins,[1344] and the skins of sheep,[1345] and dogs,[1346] beavers,[1347] otters, and badgers, tanned in a variety of ways, sometimes with and sometimes without the hair, were appropriated to the manufacture of various articles of dress. Leather, moreover, was dyed of every bright colour,[1348] purple, scarlet, and crimson, and occasionally gilded or flowered with gold,[1349] for sandals, thongs, and other purposes.

-----

Footnote 1338:

Schol. Aristoph. Av. 259.

Footnote 1339:

Dioscor. iv. 184.

Footnote 1340:

Ῥόος. Dioscor. i. 147.

Footnote 1341:

Theoph. Hist. Plant, iii. 9. 1. 14. 3.

Footnote 1342:

The low oak, which produces the large acorn used in tanning, is now found in abundance in the Troad. Chandler i. 25.

Footnote 1343:

Herod. vii. 75.

Footnote 1344:

Sandals of leather with the hair on are still occasionally observed among the sailors of Greece. Chandler. ii. p. 12.

Footnote 1345:

Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 398.

Footnote 1346:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 269.

Footnote 1347:

Dioscor. ii. 26.

Footnote 1348:

As early as the age of Moses we find mention of rams’-skins dyed red. Exod. xxv. 5.

Footnote 1349:

Poll. vii. 87.

-----

The manufacture of hats and caps,[1350] though a less important branch of industry than among the northern nations of modern times, afforded nevertheless employment to a pretty numerous class of persons. At Athens it was not fashionable in fine weather to wear a hat at all, chiefly, perhaps, because the practice was supposed to hasten the approach of grey hairs;[1351] but in those seasons of the year when sudden showers were looked for, cautious persons seldom went abroad without their broad-brim, which being furnished with a long skin thong was suffered to fall back and hang over the shoulders. If they happened to be caught by the rain when not thus provided, they threw, like Strepsiades in the Clouds, a corner of their mantle over the head. These hats were of various shapes,[1352] and manufactured of very different materials; sometimes square or lozenge-formed, like our college-caps: sometimes round with broad leaf[1353] and low basinet crown; sometimes peaked atop with rim curling all round like the bell of the Egyptian lotos. There was another modification of the hat,[1354] fashioned like a limpet-shell, and without a brim, chiefly worn by fishermen and poor operatives, and sometimes also by travellers.[1355]

-----

Footnote 1350:

Poll. vii. 171. The President Goguet, however, imagines the Greeks had no hats. v. 440. Nightcaps. Sch. Vesp. 10. Arist. Cf. Antich. di Ercol. t. viii. p. 47. Gitone, Il Cost. Ant. e Mod. di tut. i Pop. t. i. p. 102. pl. 16.

Footnote 1351:

Aristot. de Gen. Animal. v. 1. p. 355.

Footnote 1352:

Dion Chrysost. ii. 67.

Footnote 1353:

Poll. x. 164. Athen. i. 12.

Footnote 1354:

Poll. vii. 124. x. 127, 138. Solerius, de Pileo. c. viii. p. 167.

Footnote 1355:

Solerius, de Pileo. c. viii. p. 167.

-----

The cynic, Menippos, however, when making his round through Thebes, in the costume of a Fury, wore a broad-brimmed Arcadian hat, on which were represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.[1356] Among the Macedonians, who in all things affected magnificence, the hats of the courtiers and nobles were purple,[1357] like the tiara of the Persians,[1358] which, however, was furnished with side-flaps, resembling a peacock’s wings. The most common material was felt, though they were likewise made of leather. Caps were ordinarily manufactured of dog, or sheep, or lamb skin.[1359]

-----

Footnote 1356:

Bœttiger. Furies, p. 29, sqq.

Footnote 1357:

Plut. Eumenes. § 8.

Footnote 1358:

Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 63. Cf. Poll. iv. 154.

Footnote 1359:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 269. Poll. iv. 139.

-----

But if in some of these branches of the useful arts the Greeks approached, and, perhaps, equalled, the moderns, in another they probably excelled them; I mean in dyeing,[1360] more particularly, that deep crimson, or purple, of which Greek and Roman authors so often speak with an admiration bordering on rapture. Winkelmann[1361] is not far wrong in supposing there were two kinds of purple, the one containing a tinge of violet, or sea-blue, produced at Tarentum,[1362] the other resembling our lake, known in antiquity as Tyrian dye. On the origin of this colour the ancients had many legends (for they loved to build a mythos on what they could not explain), from among which we shall select the most poetical. The Tyrian Heracles loved, they say, a nymph, who dwelt somewhere about the sea-coast, and her name, it is added, was Tyros. In visiting this young lady, Heracles, according to the custom of the heroic age, was accompanied by his dog, as we find Telemachos, in the Odyssey. This same dog, not having love to support him, grew hungry by the way, and espying a purple fish upon a rock, with its head protruding from the shell, he seized, and devoured it. On Heracles reaching the residence of the nymph, she observed the muzzle of the animal dyed of a bright purple, and, in the style of a froward beauty, declared she would never again see her lover until he brought her a dress of that colour. Now this hero, as all the world knows, or may learn from the comic poets, was always more remarkable for courage and gluttony than for invention. Love, however, on the present occasion, sharpened his wits. He discovered the fish, turned dyer, and, having produced such an article as the lady required, had the honour of being esteemed the inventor of the Tyrian purple.[1363]

-----

Footnote 1360:

Cf. Plat. Tim. t. vii. 95. De Rep. t. vi. p. 183, seq. Don J. P. Canáls y Martí, sob. la Purp. de los Antiguos. Gibbon, however, considered the ancient purple very inferior to our own: “By the discovery of cochineal, &c., we far surpass the colours of antiquity. Their royal purple had a strong smell, and a dark cast, as deep as bull’s blood—obscuritas rubens (says Cassiodorus, Var. i. 2,) nigredo sanguinea. The president, Goguet, will amuse and satisfy the reader.” Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vii. 90. Note. Goguet will, no doubt, amuse and instruct, but I very much question whether he will satisfy, the reader. When Goguet and Gibbon wrote, the subject was much less understood than it is at present.

Footnote 1361:

Hist. de l’Art. iv. 5. 500, sqq.

Footnote 1362:

Horat. Epist. ii. 1. 207.

Footnote 1363:

Poll. i. 45. sqq. Palæphat. Fragm. ap. Gal. Opuscul. Mytholog. &c. p. 62. Goguet, Origine des Loix. iii. 196. Fab. Column. de Purp. i. 22.

-----

The writer to whom we are indebted for this fable, which he related for the amusement of Commodus, has preserved a valuable account of the purple fishery as carried on by the Phœnicians. They fastened, he observes,[1364] a number of small bell-formed baskets, at regular distances, to a long, stout, and tough cable, capable of resisting the action of the sea. These baskets, like the eel-traps of modern times, were surrounded at the mouth with a circle of slender twigs[1365] projecting inward, and almost meeting at the centre, resembling the bottom of a claret bottle, but with an opening through which the fish could easily force its way in, though the twigs closing with a spring behind it prevented its egress. To entice the prey, there was a bait in the basket, which, according to some, was a cockle, according to others, a frog, upon a hook,[1366] so that assurance was made doubly sure. All things thus prepared, the fisherman conveyed the apparatus to a rocky part of the shore, where they let it down, having previously fastened to it a strong cord with a piece of cork at the end, that they might be able to discover and pull it up. Leaving their traps there all night and all the ensuing day, they generally took up the basket full. Then, pounding both shell and flesh together, to prepare it for dyeing they cleansed away all impurities with water, and boiled the whole in a cauldron. The blood, being of an oily nature, melted on coming in contact with the heat and acquired its rich colour. Not always did it assume the same tint, but was sometimes yellow, sometimes a deep violet, and, occasionally, some other shade. Into this whatever was dipped immediately took the tincture of it. Nor did it all fade in the sun; but, on the contrary, rejoiced in the rays of light, as it were, its brightness imparting additional brilliance, and heightening the bloom and splendour of its tints.[1367]

-----

Footnote 1364:

Cf. Pausan. x. 37. 3.

Footnote 1365:

Cf. Poll. i. 97. Plat. Sophist. t. iv. p. 134. Æl. Var. Hist. xiii. 43.

Footnote 1366:

Athen. iii. 33.

Footnote 1367:

Poll. i. 47, sqq.

-----

Wherever, and by whomsoever, discovered, the purple was known in the time of Moses, who introduced it into the costume of the high priest, and among the ornaments of the tabernacle.[1368] Homer,[1369] too, speaks of purple among the colours worn by his heroes, for example, a large purple pelisse. Iris is denominated “purple;” we have mention, also, of a “purple cloak, of a purple ball wherewith to play;” “purple coverings,” of great beauty, for beds, or seats; “purple carpets;” “purple threads,” where the “sea-purple” is distinctly spoken of.[1370] Again, in another part of the Odyssey, we find it said, that women wove the “purple cloaks.”[1371] The President Goguet has entered into many useful investigations respecting the manner in which the Tyrian dye was used; but at the outset confounds the conchyliatæ vestes with the purple garments, though Pliny, on whom he chiefly relies, constantly distinguishes them. The dye was obtained from several kinds of shell-fish[1372] found in the Mediterranean, the best on the island on which New Tyre was built.[1373] Aristotle, who of all the ancients has best described the purple fish, observes, that there were several species, of which some were of considerable size, such as those caught near Sigeion and Lecton; while those found on the coast of Caria and in the Euripos were small. Generally, he says, such as inhabited bays or arms of the sea were large and rough, and contained a liquid of blackish hue, though sometimes it was reddish, and small in quantity. Some of these were a mina, or about seventeen ounces, in weight. Those caught close along shores, or about headlands were usually of small size, but the dye they yielded was of a ruddier tinge. In general, too, it was thought that those found on northern coasts produced a darker, those on southern coasts a ruddier dye.[1374] Purple fisheries were carried on on the coast of Africa, near the island of Menninx, and on the shores of Getulia.[1375] So, likewise, in Europe,[1376] on the coast of Laconia,[1377] whose purple was greatly celebrated; in the Euripos, as we have seen above;[1378] and in the terrible southern bend of Eubœa, beneath the cliffs of Mount Caphareus.[1379] An inferior kind of purple was obtained from the buccinum,[1380] but the genuine dye was produced by the calchè alone. The colour was contained in a white vein about the neck, the remainder of the fish being of no value. To secure, this, however, it was necessary to take the fish alive, for at its death the colour fled. Having been carefully collected, and left to macerate in salt[1381] during three days, it was mixed with a certain quantity of water. The whole was then boiled for ten days in leaden boilers over a slow fire.[1382] After this the wool well washed, cleansed and properly prepared, was dipped into it. Here it was allowed to soak during five hours. It was then taken out, dried, carded, and thrown back, where it was suffered to remain till it imbibed the whole of the dye.[1383] To this double-dyed purple the poets often allude. Thus Horace:

Te bis Afro Murice tinctæ Vestiunt Lanæ.[1384]

-----

Footnote 1368:

Exod. xxv. 4, sqq.

Footnote 1369:

Il. ζ. 219. θ. 221. ρ. 547. Odyss. δ. 115. 154. τ. 225. 242. θ. 373. δ. 298. ι. ω. 645. 796. ι. 200. Odyss. υ. 151. Cf. Pind. Pyth. iv. 203. 6.

Footnote 1370:

Odyss. ξ. 53. 306.

Footnote 1371:

Id. ν. 108.

Footnote 1372:

See a representation of the purple fish on a red jasper in Gori, Mus. Florent. ii. pl. 21. fig. 4.

Footnote 1373:

Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 60.

Footnote 1374:

Arist. Hist. Anim. v. 15. p. 128, seq. Vitruv. vii. 13.

Footnote 1375:

Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 60.

Footnote 1376:

There was another purple fishery of considerable note carried on in the Corinthian gulf by the citizens of Bulis, a city of Phocis. Pausan. x. 37. 2. 3. Steph. de Urbib. p. 238. On the modern state of Bulis see Chandler, ii. p. 288.

Footnote 1377:

Pausan. iii. 21. 6.

Footnote 1378:

Pausan. iii. 21. 6.

Footnote 1379:

Dion Chrysost. Orat. vii.

Footnote 1380:

This fish is now abundant on the shores of Naples, where it is commonly eaten. Fab. Column. de Purp. iv. 1.

Footnote 1381:

The proportion of salt was 20 oz. to 1 cwt. of the purple matter. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 62.

Footnote 1382:

The animal matter mingled with it being constantly skimmed off. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 62.

Footnote 1383:

Plin. ix. 62. Gog. iii. 20.

Footnote 1384:

Carm. ii. 16. 35, sqq. On this the ancient scholiast quoted by Bentley, says, “Bis tinctæ, dibaphæ vestes preciocissimæ.” Cf. Pompon. Mel. iii. 10. 35, p. 301. Gronov.

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And again where the Phœnician operation is spoken of:

Muricibus Tyriis iteratæ vellera lanæ Cui properabantur?[1385]

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Footnote 1385:

Epod. xii. 21, seq.

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Elsewhere in enumerating the things, wherein the vulgar pride themselves, he once more enumerates purple garments—

Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrhena sigilla, tabellas, Argentum, vestes Gætulo murice tinctas, Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere.[1386]

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Footnote 1386:

Epist. ii. 2. 180, seq.

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It was seldom or never considered sufficient to rely upon one species of fish. Usually several kinds were mingled together;[1387] and to the mixture were added many other ingredients, as nitre, urine, water, salt, and the fucus—a kind of moss—by some writers supposed to be our argol,[1388] found in abundance on the rocky shores of Crete.[1389] The tint produced by this mixture resembled the colour of the amethyst.[1390] For, under the word purple, the ancients included three distinct colours,—the first a deep violet with a black or dusky tinge, designed by Homer, when he speaks of the “purple wave,” or of “purple death.” This was the amethystine shade spoken of as so magnificent by Pliny; produced by the calchæ and buccina alone. The second which resembled deep scarlet or crimson, which is the colour of a ripe pomegranate, was the purple of Tyre and Tarentum. The third was the deep blue of the Mediterranean sea, when it begins to be ruffled by the winds; a variety produced by the buccinum alone, and always understood by the word conchyliata.[1391] Near the Isthmus of Darien, a sea-snail has been discovered, which some have supposed to be the murex of the ancients. In dimensions it is about equal to the bee. Being of extremely rare occurrence, the Indian fishermen preserve it, when found, in a vessel of water until they have collected a sufficient quantity for dyeing a piece of stuff. They then, like the ancient Tyrians, pound it shell and all with a smooth stone or something which serves them for a mortar, which as the shell is extremely thin and frail is a task of little labour, and immediately dip the cotton yarn or stuff in the liquor thus obtained. The colour resulting from this operation is the richest purple that can be conceived, which instead of fading by being passed through water grows more lustrous and brilliant the more it is washed. Stuffs dyed in this manner are, as may be supposed, exceedingly costly, and on account of their beauty much coveted by the richest of the Indian women.[1392]

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Footnote 1387:

The buccinum, for example, to give the ruddy hue. Fab. Column. de Purp. i. 19. Johan. Daniel. Annot. p. 33. Plin. ix. 37.

Footnote 1388:

Beckmann, i. 59, sqq.

Footnote 1389:

Goguet, iii. 20.

Footnote 1390:

Fab. Column. de Purpura, c. i. § 8.

Footnote 1391:

Dalecamp. ad Plin, ix. 62. t. iii. p. 770. Cf. Winkel. iv. 1. § 14.

Footnote 1392:

Valm. de Bomare. v. Murex, p. 169.

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The fucus above-mentioned, found on the shores of Crete, was sometimes employed separately in dyeing fillets, garments, and wool, and the colour thus produced was still more brilliant than that of the purple fish, though no means of fixing it could be discovered.[1393] The purple of Hermione, however, preserved its lustre and freshness for centuries. Alexander, for example, found in the royal palace of Susa vast quantities of purple garments dyed at Hermione, which, though they had been laid up nearly two hundred years, exhibited all their pristine bloom and beauty; because, observes the historian, the wool had been previously combed with white oil, and the colour fixed with honey.[1394] Even in Plutarch’s own time garments of equal age were to be seen, the purple of which had preserved its brilliance and splendour undiminished. Nay, a small pot of the dye was discovered at Pompeii which though covered atop with a thick tawny film had preserved all the deep tone and richness attributed to the Tyrian purple by the ancients.

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Footnote 1393:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 6. 5. Another method of dyeing purple prevailed in a district of Asia Minor, where the quality of the springs would appear to have fixed the colour: “The waters of Hierapolis were surprisingly attempered for tinging wool with a colour from roots, rivalling the more costly purples; and were a principal source of the riches of the place.” Chandler, i. p. 270. The learned traveller, who is exceedingly sparing of his authorities, doubtless based his relation on the following passage in Strabo: Ἔστι δὲ καὶ πρὸς, βαφὴν ἐρίων θαυμαστῶς σύμμετρον τὸ κατὰ τὴν Ἱεράπολιν ὕδωρ, ὥστε τὰ ἐκ τῶν ῥιζῶν βαπτόμενα ἐνάμιλλα εἶναι τοῖς ἐκ τῆς κόκκου καὶ ταῖς ἁλουργέσιν. l. xiii. c. iv. t. iii. p. 158.

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In dyeing scarlet, the ancients made use of kermes[1395] or cochineal, found in several parts of Greece, but imported likewise from various other countries. It was sometimes employed in giving the ground to purple stuffs.[1396] Garments of this colour would appear to have been extremely rare among the Orientals, since the admiration excited in Darius by the scarlet cloak of Syloson, whom he saw walking in the great square of Memphis, can be accounted for only by supposing that he had never beheld the like before;[1397] otherwise he would not have been so captivated by its magnificent colour as to press its wearer to sell it to him in the street. Syloson presented him the cloak as a gift; but afterwards, when Darius was king of Persia, he took care to proceed to court and make the circumstance known, upon which the generous prince overwhelmed him with his favours. This kind of dye appears to have been known in Greece from the remotest antiquity, since Simonides supposes that even the signal sail given by Ægeus to Theseus in his expedition to Crete was of a scarlet colour.[1398] Sardis was celebrated for its scarlet,[1399] whence the proverb,—to be dyed with the tincture of Sardis,—for, to be beaten black and blue. The ancients, however, generally mistook the insect for the fruit of the holm-oak, upon whose leaves it feeds; a circumstance which may be regarded as very extraordinary, when it is remembered that both the insect and the tree were daily under their eyes.

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Footnote 1394:

Plut. Vit. Alex. § 36.

Footnote 1395:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 6. 9. Cf. Fab. Column. de Purp. i. 13. Don Juan Pablo Canáls Y Martí, Memorias sobra la Purpura de los Antiguos. c. v. Phile, De Animal. Proprietat. c. xliii. p. 172, sqq. appears to describe, though in an indistinct and imperfect manner, the cochineal insect among the productions of India.

Footnote 1396:

Beckmann, ii. 171.

Footnote 1397:

Herod. iii. 139.

Footnote 1398:

Plut. Thes. § 17. In later times we find Alcibiades, on his return to Athens, hoisting purple sails in the Admiral’s galley. Plut. Alcib. § 32.

Footnote 1399:

Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 1140. ad Acharn. 118. Cf. Plin. xxiv. 4.

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The wool of sheep is said by the Greek poets to have been dyed red on their backs by eating the madder plant.[1400] The wool of brown sheep was spun, woven, and worn of its natural colour, as it is still by the rustics of several European countries. Dyes of every other colour were likewise known to the ancients; as bright flame and saffron-colour, pink, green, and russet grey;[1401] deep and sky-blue, produced by woad;[1402] and red by madder.[1403] The Phrygian dyers made use of a kind of mineral[1404] obtained from Cappadocia; and wool was sometimes dyed with a decoction of beans.[1405] Among the Egyptians, linens, muslins, and all kinds of cloths were painted with flowers and figures, in a great variety of colours;[1406] which was the case, also, among the Massagetæ, who impressed on their fine woollen cloths a multitude of patterns, which preserved their brilliance unfading to the last.[1407]

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Footnote 1400:

Virg. Eclog. iv. 45. Beckmann, History of Inventions, iii. 256—note.

Footnote 1401:

Poll. vii. 13.

Footnote 1402:

Ισάτις ἥμερος. Dioscor. ii. 215. Cf. Aristoph. Cimon. 332. Nub. 71. Dioscor. iii. 160.

Footnote 1403:

Beckmann, History of Inventions, t. iii. p. 255.

Footnote 1404:

Dioscor. v. 141.

Footnote 1405:

Id. ii. 127.

Footnote 1406:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxv. 42.

Footnote 1407:

Herod. i. 203.

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As many kinds of woollens are wholly spoiled by common washing,[1408] they were regularly, when soiled, carried by the Greeks to the fullers,[1409] whose mill and trade are supposed to have been invented by Nycias of Megara.[1410] These artisans made use of numerous earths and other substances in their operations; such as gypsum,[1411] the Cimolian earth and the Chian, the Lemnian, the Sardian, the Umbrian, the Samian, the Tymphæan, and the Chalastræan.[1412] Wool, previous to being spun, was cleansed by soap-wort.[1413] In washing clothes they commonly made use of a lye prepared with lime or wood ashes.[1414] Sponges were blanched in the following manner:[1415] over such as were extremely soft they sprinkled a quantity of salt-fish, collected from the rocks, after which they were carefully washed, and laid in the summer sun with their hollow part uppermost. They were rendered still whiter by being saturated with salt froth or sea-water, and exposed during a succession of calm summer nights to the moon’s rays.

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Footnote 1408:

Casaub. ad Theoph. Charact. p. 241.

Footnote 1409:

Herod. iv. 14. i. 92.

Footnote 1410:

Plin. vii. 57. Goguet. iv. 6.

Footnote 1411:

Theoph. de Lapid. § 67.

Footnote 1412:

Constant. v. χαλαστραῖον. Theoph. de Lapid. § 64. Plat. Rep. t. vi. 184. Poll. vii. 39. x. 135.

Footnote 1413:

Στρουθίον. Dioscor. ii. 193. Cf. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 10. 3. Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. 18.

Footnote 1414:

See Mitchell on the Acharnes. 7. Gog. Origine des Loix, i. 279.

Footnote 1415:

Dioscor. v. 138.

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The extent and importance of the Grecian fisheries[1416] may be inferred from the prodigious quantities of fish eaten in every part of Greece; for although they knew nothing in antiquity of those long fasts during which the members of the Greek church in modern times, ceasing to prey upon the dumb inhabitants of terra firma, let loose their voracity against those of the sea, they were no less partial to this kind of food than their descendants,[1417] as will have been seen from a preceding portion of this work. Fisheries were accordingly established on nearly every part of the coast of Hellas, as well as of those islands and distant colonies of which she became mistress.

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Footnote 1416:

In the heads of certain fish, jewels are said to have been sometimes found. Athen. iii. 70.

Footnote 1417:

Strabo relates an excellent anecdote in illustration of this passion of his countrymen. Speaking of the city of Iasos, situated in an island of the same name on the coast of Caria, whose inhabitants drew their chief subsistence from their maritime pursuits, and were abundantly supplied with fish, he adds,—that once upon a time a celebrated musician was performing in public before the inhabitants of this city: suddenly the bell which announced the opening of the fish-market was heard to sound. Away, in an instant, scampered the Iasians, eager to secure their favourite dainty, all except a single individual, who appeared to enjoy the performance of the citharador. Flattered by this mark of his taste or politeness, the musician approached the man, and said, “I am greatly obliged by the attention you have shown me, and have to congratulate you on your love of the art; for all the rest, as soon as they heard the bell ring, ran away.”—“What then! has the bell rung?” inquired the apparent listener, who happened to be deaf. “Yes,” answered the musician. “Then good luck be with you!” cried the man, and rising hastily from his seat, he rushed after his townsmen. Strab. xiv. 2. t. iii. p. 203, seq.

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Thus a celebrated lamprey[1418] fishery existed on the Faro of Messina, an eel-fishery at Syracuse,[1419] another for taking the purple fish, on the eastern coast of Eubœa, a second on the shores of Laconia, a third at Sigæum in Asia Minor, and a fourth in the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon.[1420] Whales and dolphins were caught in the Mediterranean, and in the Black Sea; thunnies in the same sea, on the Bosporos, in the sea of Marmora, in the Hellespont, in the Adriatic, and in nearly all the eastern parts of the Mediterranean. Many kinds of smaller fish afforded employment to numerous bodies of men in the gulfs and bays of Attica and the Peloponnesos; and flourishing sponge-fisheries were carried on along the coast of Crete, and in several other parts of the Archipelago.[1421]

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Footnote 1418:

The observations made by Spallanzani on the eel and lamprey fisheries of Stromboli, may, with equal propriety perhaps, be applied to those which are found along the roots of Ætna: “The fish here,” he says, “are very plentiful and large, especially the sea-eels and murænas; and, during my short stay in this island, I saw a greater quantity taken than during the whole time of my continuance in all the Eolian isles. They are, likewise, of an excellent taste. This abundance, I am inclined to attribute to the volcano, which has continued incessantly burning from time immemorial; and which, extending to an immense depth, must necessarily communicate a part of its heat to the submarine base of the mountain, and to the waters that surround it, in the gentle warmth of which the fish find a more agreeable place of resort, and perhaps propagate in greater numbers than elsewhere.” Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 125.

Footnote 1419:

Plut. Timol. § 20. In catching this fish it was customary to disturb the waters. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 862. In the polypus fisheries, besides the difficulty of detaching the animal from its place, there was supposed to be another, arising from the power it possesses of assuming, like the chameleon, the colour of the surrounding rocks. Lucian. Dial. Deor. Marin. iv. § 3.

Footnote 1420:

This fish served for food as well as a dye. Luc. Cynic. § 11. The cuttle-fish also was eaten as now. Catapl. § 7.

Footnote 1421:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 6. 5. Poll. i. 97.

-----

In seas frequented by sharks, sponge-fishers necessarily incurred much risk. They therefore carefully observed every circumstance denoting the absence of danger, as for example, the appearance of the anthias,[1422] which is supposed never to be seen in the neighbourhood of any voracious sea-monster; for which reason it obtained from the Greeks the name of the Sacred Fish.

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Footnote 1422:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. ix. 37. p. 279. 20. Bekk.

-----

The divers engaged in this trade made use, moreover, of many contrivances to diminish the toil and hazard of their dangerous calling. Sometimes they poured oil[1423] upon the waves, which rendered them at once more tranquil and translucent and enabled them the better to carry on their operations at the bottom of the sea. They made likewise the first step towards the invention of the diving-bell, by descending with a large vessel turned upside down upon their heads, taking care that its edges sank into the water at the same instant, by which means they carried along with them a quantity of air, and were enabled to continue a considerable space of time beneath the surface.[1424] A diver and his daughter are said to have performed good service for their country during the Median war; for, descending into the sea during a tempest, they loosened the anchors of many Persian vessels, and thus set them adrift to perish by the weather; in remembrance of which services, a statue was erected to both father and daughter at Delphi.[1425]

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Footnote 1423:

Dutens, Origine des Découvertes, 145.

Footnote 1424:

Aristot. Problem. xxxii. 5.

Footnote 1425:

Paus. x. 19. 2. Athen. vii. 48. Anthol. Græc. ad Palat. Cod. ed. ix. 296. Cf. Herod. viii. 8. Quint. Curt. iv. 3.

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The business of fishing was pursued in much the same manner as in modern times. Great numbers of smacks,[1426] of all dimensions, crowded the narrow seas between the islands and the main, making sometimes pretty long voyages, and taking passengers to augment their gains.[1427] These, moreover, formed the principal nurseries for the Grecian navies,[1428] particularly those of Athens, which consequently were manned, in the better ages of the republic, by the hardiest and most expert seamen in the ancient world. They employed in their operations both the harpoon and various kinds of large nets;[1429] and the ease and rapidity with which they filled their vessels may be inferred from the accounts given in modern times of the vast shoals of fish of all species and dimensions which in spring time collect in the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean, and pour in such multitudes into the narrow stream of the Dardanelles and the Bosporos,[1430] that, with one sweep of a net, the fishermen are enabled to fill whole skiffs, while they may be taken by the hand from the shores, killed like birds with stones, caught with unbaited hooks, or by the women in common baskets, let down by ropes from the windows of such houses in Constantinople[1431] as happen to stand on the beach. Elsewhere the fishermen made use of stop-nets in rivers or along the sea-coasts where the water for some way out was shallow. Various kinds of baskets,[1432] also, they had recourse to, together with the rod and line. Even that barbarous method, still in many parts of Europe put in practice by the vulgar, of poisoning the waters, was known to the Greeks, who, for this purpose, cast into streams or ponds the pounded leaves of the Euphorbia Platyphylla.[1433]

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Footnote 1426:

Dion Chrysost. i. 220. Cf. Aristoph. Nub. 878. Ran. 139. Eq. 1220. Acharn. 367.

Footnote 1427:

Dion Chrysost. i. 220.

Footnote 1428:

See a comparison between the hardy occupations of the citizen and the hunter in Oppian. Halieut. i. 12. Cyneget. i. 49. The same poet in the third book of his Halieutics, (35, sqq.) describes the principal qualities of a fisherman, bodily and mental, such as strength, watchfulness, love of the sea, all which must have admirably fitted him for distinguishing himself in his country’s navy.

Footnote 1429:

Plut. De Solert. Anim. § 24. Poll. i. 97. Anglers’ lines were sometimes made of τέρμινθος, a plant resembling flax. Id. i. 233. Salmas. ad Solon. p. 911. a. Etymol. Mag. 753, 10. Fishing-hooks. Goguet, i. 166. Nets were sunk by leaden weights. Poll. i. 97. Cf. Philost. Icon. i. 13. p. 783. Artemid. Oneirocrit. ii. 14. p. 102.

Footnote 1430:

See in Oppian a long and highly picturesque passage describing the allurements by which the Black Sea drew into itself those innumerable shoals of fish which in the text I have described flocking towards it. Halieut. i. 598, sqq. Cf. Strab. vii. 6. t. ii. p. 112.

Footnote 1431:

Gyllius, De Topograph. Constant. p. 6.

Footnote 1432:

Poll. i. 97.

Footnote 1433:

Dioscor. iv. 165. Plat. De Repub. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Concon. 404. See the whole process of poisoning described by Oppian, Halieut. iv. 647, seq.

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On the land-locked seas, also, and lakes, and rivers, they pursued that striking and romantic species of fishery[1434] carried on at night,[1435] in which a flaming torch held at the boats’ bows allures the fish to the surface, where by their bright eyes and glittering scales shining through the transparent water, they directed the aim of the fisherman’s trident.[1436] A small fleet of this kind of boats dispersed over a smooth sea under the lea of woody headlands or rocky shores, each with its bright red light, gliding noiselessly[1437] hither and thither, discloses a scene of singular beauty to the imagination. In the paintings of Herculaneum,[1438] we find a landscape representing a group of fishermen immediately before day, when the dusky shadows are beginning to be dispersed by the first straggling rays of light which barely enable us to distinguish the boats, the nets, the rods, the fishermen themselves, and the picturesque shore on which they are at work.

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Footnote 1434:

Cf. Herod. i. 62.

Footnote 1435:

Chandler supplies us with a picture of this kind of fishing as carried on in modern Greece: “We embarked with a rougher sea than was pleasing, and rowed out in the dark towards the island, intending to fish. We joined our two seines, and the boats parted, moving each a different way, a man letting the net gently down into the water. We met again in the centre, when some embers which had been hidden, were blown up and exposed on an iron grate, the flame was fed with cedar dipped in oil, which blazing in the wind, brightened over the deep; the red coals hissing as they fell, and were extinguished. At the same time we began to clatter with wooden hammers on the sides and seats of the wherries, to dash with a pole, and to throw stones, disturbing and driving the fish, and darting a trident or spear if any appeared at the top, dazzled by the light; sprinkling oil to render the surface tranquil and pellucid. The men drew up the net with caution, fearing the fins of some poisonous fish, particularly the scorpion, which is killed with a blow on the head while entangled, when the danger ceases. The boats meeting again, they untie the seines, and throwing the fiery brands into the sea, proceed in the dark to some other place. This is the common method of fishing in these seas.” Travels in Greece and Asia Minor, ii. p. 198, seq.

Footnote 1436:

Quint. Smyrn. Posthomeric, vii. 569, sqq.

Footnote 1437:

Cf. Oppian. Halieut. iii. 429.

Footnote 1438:

Antich. di Ercol. t. xii. p. 273.

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One of the most profitable of the Greek fisheries was that of the thunny, which commenced about the rising of the Pleiades and terminated shortly after the setting of Arcturus.[1439] As this animal always moves about in troops, and swims near the surface of the water, which it visibly disturbs in its progress, at the same time blowing sportively, and uttering a loud noise, the fishermen, on the shores frequented by it, constantly stationed a number of watchmen along the beach, some perched aloft on the summits of cliffs, others on detached rocks, rising out of the waves, or in trees, or on the top of masts set up at certain distances along the coast, that they might give notice of the approach of the thunnies.[1440] As soon as the signal was given the fishermen pushed out with their barks, making a wide circuit, so as to take the fish in flank. Then letting down their long nets furnished with leaden weights to sink them, and with cords[1441] wherewith to draw them up, they formed themselves into a semicircle, which rapidly narrowing round the shoal drove them towards the land, by which means the greatest number were either taken in the nets, or speared by tridents.[1442] Respecting one of these fishing stations, on the coast of Cypros, a very romantic anecdote is related.[1443] The inhabitants we are told, having sculptured a marble lion, which they adorned with emerald eyes, set it up on the tomb of a prince of the country named Hermias,[1444] upon an eminence overlooking the sea. The splendour of the emerald, penetrating through the waves, scared away the thunnies, which in truth are remarkable for their timidity, so that the fishermen of that part of the island must unquestionably have been ruined had they not discovered the property of their lion’s optics, and substituted in lieu of the emerald, eyes less terrible to the pusillanimous herds of Thetis. A circumstance almost equally extraordinary is related of the strait by which the stream of the Bosporos disgorges itself into the Propontis. Here they say a rock of marvellous whiteness is discovered on the Asiatic side through the waves in the neighbourhood of Chalcedon, which by its brightness scares away the thunnies, both in their way to and from the Black Sea. The ancient naturalists remark, that the thunny in this part of its migrations observes steadily one course, keeping generally on the Asiatic side in the ascent to the Pontus, where, excepting the seal and the dolphin, nothing destructive to fish is found, and, after making the circuit of its shores, returning to the Ægæan close along the coast of Europe.

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Footnote 1439:

Plin. ix. 20. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 313. 361. 862. Philost. Icon. i. 13, p. 783.

Footnote 1440:

Suid. v. θυννοσκόπος. t. i. p. 1336, seq. Aristoph. Eq. 313. Aristot. Hist. Animal. iv. 10. They who act as sentinels in the catching of the sword-fish, take their station on a platform in the fishing boat itself. “In the middle (of the bark) is fixed an upright pole, seventeen feet high, with ladders to go up it, and a kind of round platform at the top, for one of the crew, who acts as sentinel, to stand on. This platform is called fariere.” Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 336.

Footnote 1441:

Poll. i. 97.

Footnote 1442:

Similar methods still prevail in the Mediterranean. “We had,” says Chandler, “frequent opportunities (while at Genoa) of seeing the method of fishing within the mole. Several seines are united and extended so far as to form a large semicircle, but much curved at the two extremities. The men then retire to some distance, and begin clattering with sticks or hammers on the sides of their boats; the noise making the fish rise. One stationed on the yard-arm of a ship, takes notice which way they swim, and gives directions, until they are within the net, when they are driven towards the ends, and are soon entangled; or, trying from despair to leap over, fall on a wing, which is fastened to long reeds, and kept floating horizontally on the surface. The reward of much toil was, now and then a few mullet. The thynnus, or thunny fish, was anciently and is now taken nearly in this manner, but in shoals which endanger and often break the nets.” Travels, &c., i. p. 6, seq.

Footnote 1443:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 17.

Footnote 1444:

Cf. Winkelm. ii. 93.

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This proceeding they account for by supposing that, of its two dull eyes, the right sees best, and that, in obedience to the guidance of this peeper, it makes the circuit of the sea in the manner stated. A better reason may be, that its peculiar food[1445] is most plentiful on the Asiatic coast in spring, and on the European in autumn, if, after all, we are to regard the fact itself as well established.[1446] In this traject, however, it seems in reality, for some cause or another, to shun the vicinity of the City of the Blind, which constituted, perhaps, one of the principal causes of its inferiority to Byzantium. Nevertheless, a very delicate species of pelamys,[1447] caught there, was known in the commerce of the ancient world, and transported to all parts of Greece.

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Footnote 1445:

Observations made on the habits of the swordfish may be thought to give some colour to this relation of the ancient naturalists: “The swordfish, we are told, is taken by the Messinese sailors in two ways; that is, with the lance, and the palimadara, a kind of net with very close meshes. This fishery begins about the middle of April, and continues till the middle of September. From the middle of April to the end of June it is carried on upon the coast of Calabria; and from the end of June to the middle of September on that of Sicily. The reason of this is, that, by the account of all the fishermen, the swordfish, from April till June, entering by Faro, coasts the shore of Calabria, without approaching that of Sicily; and passes the contrary way from the end of July to the middle of September. We know not whether it takes this contrary route for the sake of food, or from any other cause; or whether it be the same fish that passes and repasses; it is only certain that it does not coast the shore of Sicily but when it goes to spawn.” Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 331.

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We have remarked above, that the taking of the thunny commenced in spring, when it appears to have been in excellent condition, and very highly prized. During winter, whatever may have been its quality, it was not to be caught, since it retired to the depths of the Ægæan, beyond the reach of nets or tridents. In the heat of summer it was rendered lean and flabby by the persecution of a kind of worm, which, insinuating itself beneath the fins,[1448] harassed it incessantly. But, towards autumn, being delivered by nature from this pest, it again became plump, and was esteemed excellent eating. The growth of this fish is extremely rapid, more especially in the Black Sea, where, amid the vast quantities of mud and slime brought down by the numerous rivers, it finds in great abundance the food most congenial to its taste.[1449] The thunny, properly so called, is at present[1450] scarce along the coast of Mingrelia, where, by the ancients, it is said to have abounded, which renders it not improbable, that they included under this name more than one species of sturgeon, a fish still found in great numbers in those parts of the Black Sea.

-----

Footnote 1446:

Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 20.

Footnote 1447:

Oppian, who tells a wonderful story about the thunny devouring its spawn, immediately adds, that the roes which escaped, concealed among the reeds and rushes, became pelamydes:

Τὰ δ᾽ ἐν δονάκεσσι καὶ ἐν σχοίνοισι μένοντα Πηλαμύδων ἀγέλας ὥρη τέκεν Halieut. iv. 510, seq.

Footnote 1448:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. viii. 13. p. 231. 30.

Footnote 1449:

Oppian. Halieut. i. 600, sqq.

Footnote 1450:

Voyages au Nord, vii. 187.

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The method of taking the pelamys[1451] has been graphically described by an ancient writer. A well-appointed and swift bark, putting to sea with her rowers, dashed out as rapidly as possible into deep water, upon which one of the crew, stationed at the stern, let down the tackle. This consisted of two strong ropes, one on either side, to which were attached a number of small cords, each with a hook at the end, baited with the Laconian purple fish, and garnished with a feather of the sea-mew, which, glancing hither and thither in the currents of the sea, assisted in attracting the eye of the pelamydes. The boat then traced various lines upon the surface of the deep, now skimming in this direction, now in that, until it was followed by a shoal of fish, which, coming up with it, voraciously gorged the baits until not a single hook was left without its prey. Upon this the rowers desisted from their toil, and, pulling up the ropes, generally found their boat laden with the take.[1452]

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Footnote 1451:

Pallas supposes this fish to be the Mugil Cephalus, or mullet, from the eggs of which Botargo is prepared. Travels in Southern Russia, iv. 241.

Footnote 1452:

Ælian. de Nat. Animal. xv. 11.

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The manner in which the thunny is taken on the coast of Chili may, perhaps, be worth mentioning for the sake of comparison. As soon as the Indians discover a shoal of these fish near the shore they put to sea on large sealskin floats inflated, like bladders, with air, carrying with them a sharp-pronged trident, fastened to a tough and very long rope. They then approach and pierce the fish, which, immediately upon being struck, darts out to sea with prodigious celerity, the Indian, meanwhile, rapidly uncoiling his rope till the strength of the thunny is spent through loss of blood, after which he draws back his prey, and, raising it upon his float, returns to the shore rejoicing.[1453]

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Footnote 1453:

Ovalle, i. 17. Baumgarten, i. 4. Aristot. Hist. Anim. iv. p, 109. Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 20, seq.

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It is probable that, in this manner of fishing, the Indian draws near the thunny while asleep,[1454] as we find to have been often the practice among the Greek fishermen, who when they went forth at night, at which time the thunny is exceedingly drowsy, were attracted towards their prey by the white belly of the fish sleeping quietly on the surface of the water. Many other kinds of fish also appear to have been taken while asleep, notwithstanding that in general their slumbers are brief. Thus flat-fish, nestling in the sand or mud, were discovered through the transparent water, and pierced with the trident. So likewise the sea-dog, the gilthead, and the mullet, were taken by day, with the trident, while asleep; otherwise it has been thought they could scarcely be touched by this instrument. The skate and other fishes of the Selachian tribe were sometimes found to sleep so soundly, that they could be taken by the hand.[1455]

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Footnote 1454:

According to Oppian, however, most species of fish, like the Olympian Zeus, refuse to submit to the chains of sleep, and keep their intellectual faculties perpetually on the stretch. But the Scaros, he allows, is occasionally caught napping. Halieut. ii. 656.

Footnote 1455:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. iv. 10. p. 109.

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On the shores of the Chelidonian isles there was a celebrated anthias fishery which was carried on in a peculiar manner. The fishermen putting to sea in their bark, and clad in garments of a sober colour, sailed backward and forward daily in the same place and at the same hour. By this means, the anthias, which in great numbers frequents that part of the sea, became accustomed to the sight of the vessel, and by degrees approached it, one of the shoal generally preceding the rest. To him the fishermen threw out something of which the anthias is fond, and continued to do so until the fish became so tame that they would eat food from his hand. A hook was then introduced into the bait, and as the fish crowded around the bark in prodigious multitudes, they were caught rapidly, and handed to a second person, who threw them into the bottom of the boat upon heaps of soft rags, lest by their bounding and struggling they should make a noise and frighten away their companions. The shadow of the boat assisted in concealing this manœuvre from the fish. It was considered necessary to spare the anthias which first approached, since, being probably a kind of leader, his disappearance instantly put all the rest to flight.[1456] Sometimes it is said multitudes of these fish were collected round the boat by the striking of two bits of wood together in the manner of castanets.[1457] The Milesians[1458] possessed close to their city a very lucrative fishery chiefly of the sea-dog,[1459] which there attained a larger size than anywhere else. This is supposed to have been owing to an extensive lagoon of fresh water, having however with the sea a channel of communication through which these fish found their way in, where they grew tame and fat, and were taken in great numbers.[1460]

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Footnote 1456:

Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 85.

Footnote 1457:

Oppian. Halieut. iii. 205, sqq.

Footnote 1458:

Athen. vii. 86, seq.

Footnote 1459:

Remarkable for its voracity. Lucian. Dial. Mort. viii. The sea-dog was classed by Linnæus among the amphibia; but Spallanzani and M. Vicq-d-Azyr, restored it, upon more accurate observation, to its place among the fishes. Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 379.

Footnote 1460:

Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 361.

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At a point on the gulf of Smyrna, a productive fishery is at present carried on in a very ingenious manner. The shore being low and level, a continuous sweep of reed-fences is stretched along, so as to enclose a considerable space of water, and furnished at intervals with gates, which are raised occasionally for letting in the shoals. The avenues are then closed, and the fish taken with facility. On the coast of China a similar fishery is found, lines of mats being substituted for reeds.[1461]

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Footnote 1461:

Chandler, i. 85. Cf. 151. Osbeck, Voyage to China, i. 199.

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There was a small, but apparently productive, fishery in the canton of Marathon.[1462] The right of fishing in the salt stream of the Rheitæ was secured by law to the priests of Eleusis,[1463] whose city was famous for the scombros as well as for soles or turbots.[1464]

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Footnote 1462:

Paus. i. 32. 7. Meurs. Rel. Att. c. viii. p. 32. Chandler. ii. 184.

Footnote 1463:

Paus. i. 38. 1. ii. 24. 6. Chandler, ii. 210.

Footnote 1464:

Athen. vii. 24.

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