POPULAR SEARCHES:   rings  cut stones  earrings  tourmaline  beryl  yellow supphire  
 
This chapter is tagged (labeled) with: 

Ch. 5: Aurum, Gold

Ch. 5: Aurum, Gold Page of 377 Ch. 5: Aurum, Gold Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
210 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS METALS, &c.
doubtless stood the air very satisfactorily for a certain time, at all events sufficiently long to secure his payment. Pliny complains that mercury was then only used in gilding silver : for bronze-work, " which by law ought to be gilt by means of argentum vivum, or at least of hydrargyrum," a cheap and fraudulent substitute had been universally adopted, the particulars of which, however, are to me unintelligible. The bronze was made red-hot, then plunged in a pickle of salt, vinegar, and alum ; it was now polished with sand, when its lustre proved if it were sufficiently purified. In this case it was slightly heated, and thus "tamed down" so as to receive the gold-leaf, which was fixed on it by means of a mixture of pumice, alum, and quicksilver. Perhaps the object was to economize the quicksilver, evidently an expensive article at that time (xxxiii. 20).
To understand the reason for these complaints, it must be borne in mind, as already stated under Argentum, tbat Pliny distinguishes the Argentum Vivum, the native quicksilver, found liquid and pure in the mines of other metals, from the Hydrargyrum, extracted by sublimation from the Minium, its sulphuret: although the metal is precisely the same in both cases. The greater rarity of Mercury in its native form * must have given rise to this notion as to its superior quality. The Romans obtained it from the Spanish silver-mines : and still Almaden is one of the two chief sources, Idria in Oarniola being the other.
Statues made entirely of gold seem to have been pecu­liarly an Oriental invention. Herodotus, and after him Diodorus, have left accounts of idols of the kind, formerly standing in Babylon, and of a weight evidently largely exaggerated by tradition : for the iconoclastic Persians had
* " Et alias Argentum vivum non largum inventum est."
Ch. 5: Aurum, Gold Page of 377 Ch. 5: Aurum, Gold
Suggested Illustrations
Other Chapters you may find useful
Other Books on this topic
bullet Tag
This Page