much gold or silver, are replenished again from crude pyrites alone. If
from this poor ore, with melted pyrites alone, material for cakes cannot
be made, there are added other fluxes which have not previously been
melted. These fluxes are, namely, lead ore, stones easily fused by fire
of the second order and sand made from them, limestone, tophus, white
schist, and iron stone21.
Although this method of smelting ores is rough and might not seem to
be of great use, yet it is clever and useful ; for a great weight of ores, in
which the gold, silver, or copper are in small quantities, may be reduced into
a few cakes containing all the metal. If on being first melted they are too
crude to be suitable for the second melting, in which the lead absorbs the
precious metals that are in the cakes, or in which the copper is melted out of
them, yet they can be made suitable if they are repeatedly roasted, sometimes as often as seven or eight times, as I have explained in the last book.
Smelters of this kind are so clever and expert, that in smelting they take out
all the gold and silver which the assayer in assaying the ores has stated to be
contained in them, because if during the first operation, when he makes the
cakes, there is a drachma of gold or half an uncia of silver lost from the ores,
the smelter obtains it from the slags by the second smelting. This method of
smelting ores is old and very common to most of those who use other methods.
Although lead ores are usually smelted in the third furnace—whose taphole is always open,—yet not a few people melt them in special furnaces by a
method which I will briefly explain. The Carni22 first burn such lead ores,
and afterward break and crush them with large round mallets. Between
the two low walls of a hearth, which is inside a furnace made of and vaulted
with a rock that resists injury by the fire and does not burn into chalk, they
place green wood with a layer of dry wood on the top of it ; then they throw
the ore on to this, and when the wood is kindled the lead drips down and
runs on to the underlying sloping hearth23. This hearth is made of pulverised
J1For discussion of these fluxes see note page 232.
MCarni. Probably the people of modern Austrian Carniola, which lies south of Styria
and west of Croatia.
23Historical Note on Smelting Lead and Silver.—The history of lead and silver
smelting is by no means a sequent array of exact facts. With one possible exception, lead does
not appear upon the historical horizon until long after silver, and yet their metallurgy is so
inextricably mixed that neither can be considered wholly by itself. As silver does not occur
native in any such quantities as would have supplied the amounts possessed by the Ancients,
we must, therefore, assume its reduction by either (1) intricate chemical processes, (2) amalgamation, (3) reduction with copper, (4) reduction with lead. It is impossible to conceive of the
first with the ancient knowledge of chemistry ; the second (see note 12, p. 297) does not appear
to have been known until after Roman times ; in any event, quicksilver appears only at about
400 B.c. The third was impossible, as the parting of silver from copper without lead involves
metallurgy only possible during the last century. Therefore, one is driven to the conclusion
that the fourth case obtained, and that the lead must have been known practically contemporaneously with silver. There is a leaden figure exhibited in the British Museum among the
articles recovered from the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, and considered to be of the Archaic
period—prior to 3800 b.c. The earliest known Egyptian silver appears to be a necklace
of beads, supposed to be of the XII. Dynasty (2400 B.C.), which is described in the 17th
Memoir, Egyptian Exploration Fund (London, 1898, p. 22). With this exception of the
above-mentioned lead specimen, silver articles antedate positive evidence of lead by nearly a
millennium, and if we assume lead as a necessary factor in silver production, we must conclude
it was known long prior to any direct (except the above solitary possibility) evidence of lead
itself. Further, if we are to conclude its necessary association with silver, we must assume a
knowledge of cupellation for the parting of the two metals. Lead is mentioned in 1500 B.c.
