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156 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
to our 8-carat, so much employed in neck and guard chains, and called by the sellers fine :
but the Romans disdained to give the title of " auruni " to the noble
metal unless totally separated from all baser admixture. This true "
Corinthian Brass " was only used for making dishes and
drinking-vessels. The wealthy Spurinna, a friend of the younger
Pliny's, boasted of a complete dinner service in this rare material.
Pliny (xxxiv. 3) laughs at those dilettanti who gave that name to the
metal of the old Greek statues they so eagerly collected; adding, that
"they pretended to a knowledge in this matter merely to dis- ' tinguish
themselves from other people, without in reality having any deeper
understanding of it." * This he proves by showing (in bis catalogue of
statuaries) that the great masters whose material these connoisseurs
styled promiscuously " Corinthian," had flourished all of them some
ages before the fall of Corinth (b.c. 147).
For he accepts as true the account given of the accidental discovery of
this alloy in consequence of a fire, during the sack of that city,
having melted a number of works in the different metals that had been
brought together (by the plunderers). Of the same tale Petronius makes
his hero Trimalchio, the wealthy " snob," give a comical version : "
But that you may not take me for a know-nothing, I understand quite
well how the Corinthian Brass first came about. At the sack of Troy
Hannibal, a cunning fellow and a big rogue, heaped up all the gold,
silver, and bronze statues into one vast heap, and then set fire to it.
The metals fused and
* Martial lets us know a curious test of the genuineness of the composition : his virtuoso
" Consuluit nares an olerent vasa
Corinthum," and it is certain that the above-named admixture of the
precious metals would go far to neutralize the peculiar nauseous smell
of the baser one in the resultant.
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