AES
AES (
χαλκός). Much confusion
arises from the fact that both Greeks and Romans use only one term for
copper and for that mixture of copper and tin which we call bronze.
Excepting perhaps gold, copper is the easiest of metals to find and fashion,
being found in lumps, and not, like iron, hidden in ore. Hesiod and
Lucretius, and ancient writers generally, made the age of Bronze precede
that of Iron, and that they
[p. 1.39]were right is abundantly
proved by the excavations of modern times. There seems to have been a time
immediately succeeding the Stone age when implements were beaten out of pure
copper, but it did not last long; the custom of adding tin to copper was
introduced, and from that time until the close of ancient history copper
unmixed was seldom used for any purpose, various metals being added to it to
increase its hardness. Bronze, containing about 12 to 14: per cent. of tin
and 88 to 86 per cent. of copper, was used at a very early period in Egypt
and Asia. The use of it was introduced into Greece in pre-historic times,
probably by the Phoenicians. Tin is not found in Greece, and in fact exists
but in few parts of Europe; the Phoenicians are supposed to have travelled
in search of it as far as Cornwall and India. The likeness of the Greek word
for tin (
κασσίτερος) to the Sanskrit
kastïra seems to indicate that the original
supply of Greek tin came from India. To account however for the enormous
quantity of tin which in the Bronze age must have circulated through Europe
is not easy.
In Homer's time bronze is the usual material for tripods, vessels, armour of
defence, and even spears, though iron was beginning to be used for offensive
weapons. It is probable that soon after the Homeric age weapons of bronze
fell out of use. This compound however continued to be largely employed for
utensils of all kinds, for works of art and other purposes. The interior of
the treasuries of Mycenae and Orchomenus were lined with bronze; bronze was
used in historical times for vessels, candelabra, chariots, for the
inscribing of treaties and laws, for personal ornament, and in places for
coin. Also all instruments used for religious purposes were made of bronze
from motives of religious conservatism. The abundance of copper sufficiently
accounts for its general use among the ancients. We have a remarkable result
of this fact in the use of
χαλκεὺς and
χαλκεύειν, where working in iron is
meant (
Hom. Od. 9.391; Aristot.
Poët. 25). One of the chief sources of copper in
antiquity was Cyprus; from the name of that island is derived the Low-Latin
cuprum, and our word copper. The metal was also
procured in Euboea, near the town of Chalcis, and in other parts of Greece;
also in Campania in Italy, in Germany and elsewhere. But the most celebrated
bronze did not come from those regions, but was an object of special
manufacture elsewhere. Two of the most celebrated mixtures were the Delian
(
Plin. Nat. 34.9) and the Aeginetan
(
l.c. § 10), which were much used in
art; we learn that Myron used the former mixture, Polycleitus the latter.
The Delian was reckoned the more precious of these, but still more valuable
was the
hepatizon or liver-coloured bronze, and most
valuable of all the Corinthian. With regard to the last-mentioned a silly
story was told that it was produced by a fortuitous concourse of melted
metals en the occasion of the burning of Corinth by Mummius. Pliny (
34.7) sensibly remarks that this story is
absurd, because most of the authors of the highly valued works in Corinthian
bronze lived at a much earlier period. A large number of varieties of bronze
of various colours were known to the ancients, and it seems that they tinted
their statues by making them of a judicious mixture of sorts. Thus we hear
of a bronze Jocasta which was pale, of an Athamas which was blushing (
Plin. Nat. 34.140), and of a Pallas with
ruddy cheeks, made by Pheidias. Not only were the ancients clever at
producing varieties in the metal, but they seem to have understood the art
of hardening it by dipping in water and exposure to air. There is a passage
even in Homer which is supposed to allude to this process (
Od. 9.391), and recent experiments have proved
that this is a possibility, contrary to the usual opinion of metallurgists.
The mixture of copper and zinc which we call brass was also known in
antiquity, at all events in later Greek and Roman times. It is of this
compound that Roman sestertii and dupondii were made, as has been proved by
analysis. As Pliny (
34.4) specially states
that these were made of orichalcum, it seems that that term, which was in
early times of quite vague meaning, was afterwards narrowed to the meaning
brass. This is further shown by a passage in
Cicero (
de Offic. 3.23, 92), who says that gold and
orichalcum may be confused in consequence of their superficial resemblance.
The chief authority as regards the kinds and working of bronze is Pliny
(
Hist. Nat. xxxiv.). He distinguishes
copper ore into two kinds: cadmea, found in Italy and Germany, and
chalcitis, in Cyprus and elsewhere. Of Corinthian bronze ( § 8) he
distinguishes three kinds; in the first silver.predominates, in the second
gold, in the third the metals are balanced and harmonized. Of Cyprian bronze
( § 94) the chief classes are
coronarium, which is of golden hue when divided into thin layers,
and
regulare, which can be hammered and drawn
out into bars and wires. A commoner kind of copper (not Cyprian), called
caldarium, does not give to the hammer, and
is only fit for melting. At Capua they added to copper to make bronze 10 per
cent. of Spanish plumbum argentarium, which was made of tin and lead in
equal proportions. Pliny states that copper was largely used in medicine (
§ 100, foll.), being either mixed with milk or sulphur for external
application to wounds, or taken internally, mixed with honey, in order to
cause vomiting. For a mass of details of this character we must refer the
reader to Pliny himself.
In all early bronze-work found in Greece and Etruria, the processes of
manufacture are simple. The usual process for cups, utensils, and ornaments
is working plates with the hammer into the required shape, fastening them
together with nails or (sometimes) with solder, and beating up a pattern on
them in
repoussé work and finishing with
a graving-tool. Small figures are sometimes cast in the lump, but nothing
large. The hammering process was called by the Greeks
σφυρηλατεῖν. The British Museum possesses the effigy of a
deity thus worked in plates; similar was no doubt the bronze statue earliest
erected at Rome, that dedicated by Sp. Cassius to Ceres. When we are told
that the Greeks Rhoecus and Theodorus first cast in bronze (
Θεόδωρον καὶ Π̔οῖκον Σαμίους εἶναι τοὺς
διαχέαντας χαλκὸν πρώτους,
Paus. 9.41.1), we must perhaps understand by
this that these artists introduced the method of casting statues hollow, not
solid, as their predecessors had done. These artists may have lived about
the 60th
[p. 1.40]Olympiad, and certainly soon after that
time bronze statuary spread with great rapidity over Greece; and indeed
bronze continued a favourite material with sculptors until the decay of art.
Of the formative process we have a vivid picture on a Greek vase of good
period, engraved as the frontispiece to Mr. Murray's
History of Greek
Sculpture. The extraordinary abundance of works of art in
bronze, found on almost all ancient sites, especially at Herculaneum and
Pompeii, is a notable fact.
Copper as Coin.--In the coinage of the Greeks and Romans
copper is seldom unalloyed. A number of analyses made of late years of Greek
coins show a proportion of tin of from 10 to 16 per cent., and an occasional
2 to 5 per cent. of lead. Roman aes signatum in republican times shows a
proportion of 5 to 8 per cent. of tin and 16 to 29 of lead. After the time
of Augustus a change was introduced in the composition of Roman coin.
Thenceforward sestertii and dupondii were made of brass, that is to say, of
a mixture containing 20 per cent. of zinc and 80 of copper; while the asses
were made entirely of copper. Money of copper and bronze stood on a very
different footing in Italy to that on which it stood in Hellas and Asia. For
in Western countries copper was the usual medium of exchange and measure of
value; the chief currency consisted in early times of huge ingots of copper
stamped with an official type; and when gold and silver came into use, they
at first passed merely as the equivalents and representatives of so much
copper. In the East, on the other hand, where gold and silver were the true
media of exchange, and copper was used only for very small values, it was
seldom minted save as money of account. [See
NUMMUS] The Ptolemies of Egypt minted copper pieces
of full value; and Brandes (
Gewichtswesen, p. 292) is
disposed to think that the early Athenian and other copper money was minted
up to full weight for a time. But this was exceptional and in almost all
Hellenic settlements copper money was a currency of tokens; and the weight
of it is consequently most irregular. Copper money was first minted in
Greece towards the end of the 5th century, at which period the cities of
South Italy, Sicily, and Hellas alike began to strike copper pieces in place
of the minute silver coins which had hitherto passed as small change.
Conservatives objected to the innovation, as we know from Aristophanes
(
Aristoph. Frogs 725.). [
CHALCUS]
Since the most ancient coins in Rome and the old Italian states were made of
aes, this name was given to money in general, so that Ulpian (
Dig. 50, tit. 16,
s. 159)
says,
Etiam aureos nummos aes dicimus. (Compare
Hor.
Ars Poët. 345;
Ep. 1.7, 23.) For
the same reason we have
aes alienum, meaning
debt, and
aera in the plural, pay to the
soldiers. (
Liv. 5.4;
Plin. Nat. 34.1.) The Romans had no other coinage except copper,
till B.C. 269, five years before the First Punic War, when silver was first
coined; gold was not coined till sixty-two years after silver. (
Plin. Nat. 33.42, foll.) For this reason
Argentinus, in the Italian mythology, was made the son of Aesculanus.
(
Quia prius aerea pecunia in usu esse coepit, post
argentea: August.
Civ. Dei, 4.21.) For a
further account of Roman copper money, see As.
As to the relations in value of the three metals, gold, silver, and copper,
see ARGENTUM.
For a fuller account of the use of bronze in antiquity the reader may
consult: Rossignol,
Les Métaux dans
l'Antiquité; Guillaume,
La Sculpture en
Bronze; J. Evans,
Ancient Bronze Implements. The
ancient testimonies as to gold, silver, and copper mines are collected by
Sabatier,
Production de I´Or, de I´Argent et du
Cuivre chez les Anciens (1850).
[
P.G]
