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Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying

Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying Page of 453 Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
LAPIS LYDIUS.
213
the filings assayed, and, whitening them for a time, so enabled them to pass for fine standard. Another and more ready test was to breathe upon the polished surface, the more quickly the breath dispersed, the better the quality of the plate. As the coin even in Pliny's age was falling so rapidly in its standard, we may suspect that the plate also was of a quality more or less debased, according to the honesty of the silversmith.
It is a curious fact that the Chinese Tutenague or " white copper " (of late years so largely manufactured here under the name of German silver) had already found its way to Europe as a substitute for the precious metal. Crinagoras sends to a friend for a birth-day present, " a copper flaggon (olpe) exactly resem­bling silver, an Indian work," together with a neat epigram (Anth. vi. 261).
The famed " Corinthian Brass " may be classed indifferently amongst the ancient alloys of either gold or of silver. Pliny describes three qualities of this composite metal, which was an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. In fact it was much the same as what our jewellers dignify with the name of gold, and employ for all articles not Hall-marked. The first quality was yellow-coloured, in which the gold preponderated ; the second resembled silver, that metal constituting the greater portion of its mass ; the third contained all three in equal proportions. Such alloys would all now pass for gold, and indeed the first is better than our 12-carat gold, and the third equal to our S-carat, so much employed in neck and guard chains : but the Romans disdained to give the title of " aurum " to the noble metal unless totally separated from all baser admixture. This true " Corinthian Brass " was only used for making dishes and drinking-vessels. Pliny (xxxiv. 3) laughs at those dilettanti who gave that name to the material of the old Greek statues they so eagerly collected ; adding, that " they pre­tended to a knowledge in this matter merely to distinguish them­selves from other people, without in reality having any deeper understanding of it." This he proves by showing (in his cata­logue of statuaries that follows) that the great artists whose statues these · connoisseurs styled promiscuously "Corinthian," had flourished all of them some ages before the fall of Corinth. For he accepts as true the account given of the accidental dis-
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