Walters, Henry Beauchamp: Catalogue of the bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1899)

INTRODUCTION.

XXIX

answering to our “ latten.” It is frequently mentioned by Alexandrine and
Roman writers, and is described as like gold in appearance, but not specially
valuable ; for instance, Horace (De Art. Poet. 202), in speaking of the difference
between the Roman and Greek stagc, alludes to the

tibia no7i ut nunc orichalco vincta.

Early allusions to opei-^aXKov in Greek writers seem to be merely poetical, as
in Hom. Hymn. ad Ven. v. 9 : iv Se TprjTolcn, Xofioicn | avdepl operydlicou yjpvaoio
Te Tipr/evTos ; and again in Hes. Scut. Herc. 122 : co; ehvorv Kvppidav dpee%d\Koi.o
(fraecvov, j ' Htpaiarov kXvtci Scbpa, irepl Kvr/ppacv edr/Ke. Plato (Cnt. 114 E) speaks
of this metal with much commendation : Kal to vvv ovopa^opevov povov, rore Se
7r\eov ovoparo; rjv ro 7ivo<s eK 7/)? dpvTTopevov 6peryd\Kou, KaTa tottov; 7ro\\ou<i
Trj<; vrjaov, 7r\r)v y^puaov TiprdrTaTOv ev Toi; rore ov. It is also alluded to by
Pliny (H.N.. xxxiv. 2) as a natural mineral, iong since exhausted.

There are in all five processes which were employed by

Methods of the ancients for the production of works in bronze : 1. For

working in statues : (a) solid casting ; (d) beaten plates riveted together

Bronze. (a<f>vpij\aTov) ; (c) hollow casting or cire perdu. 2. For

reliefs and decorative wcrk : (a) repousse work or epTvaiaTiKtj ;
(b) chasing or TopevTtKrj.

Although ^aX/ceu? and ^aXKeiov are used generally for all kinds of metal,
words like ^aXKOTvTreiv and the like are restricted in their sense to working in
bronze ; the expression for “worked bronze” is %d\/c&>/xa, or, in the poets,
'XyXKevpa. Of Latin words, statuaria ars was in Imperial times specially
applied to bronze sculptures.

One thing that is likely to strike a modern is the extensive use of bronze in
antiquity, as compared with its use at the present day ; and this even while iron
and other materials were equally well known and in equally constant use. For
instance, the ancients frequently employed bronze for locks and keys, for knives
and other tools, or again for defensive armour, spear-heads, and arrow-heads,
where in all cases we should use iron, or at any rate steel. No doubt this is
largely due to the invention of the latter metal, which appears to have been quite
unknown to the ancients, but. this does not explain the preference for bronze
over iron in many cases. It may also be noted that bronze is largely used for
furniture, such as chairs and couches, and for vessels of all kinds, where we
employ wood, glass, clay, and other materials.

The earliest Greek bronze figures are either cast solid or
Solid Casting. made by the process of acf)vprj\aTov, both of which methods
seem to have lasted down to the sixth century B.C., when
the hollow casting was introduced. No doubt the waste of valuable material
and inconvenient weight of the solid-cast statues led to the invention of this
later process. The process of solid casting was of course simple enough ; it was
presumably acquired from Egypt, where this process seems to have been known