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Ransack’d the centre, and with impious hands

Rifled the bowels of their mother earth

For treasures better hid.

The greater antiquity of copper in Southern Europe was distinctly affirmed, as has been seen, by the Ancients. The use of sheeting, or plating, on wood or stone was known as long ago as the days of Hesiod (b.c. 880–850?):

Τοῖς δ’ ἦν χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα, χάλκεοι δέ τε οἶκοι,

Χαλκῷ δ’ εἰργάζοντο, μέλας δ’ οὐκ ἔσκε σίδερος.—Erga, 149.

Copper for armour and arms had they, eke Copper their houses,

Copper they wrought their works when naught was known of black iron.[168]

Copper sheets[169] were also used for flooring, as we learn from the χάλκεος οὐδός (Copper threshold) of Sophocles (‘Œdip. Col.’); and the treasury-room of Delphi, as opposed to the λάϊνος οὐδός (stone threshold). So in the Palace of Alcinous (‘Odys.’ vii. 75) the walls and threshold were copper, the pillars and lintels were silver, and the doors and dogs of gold.

The same practice was continued in the Bronze Period, as Dr. Schliemann proved when exploring the Thalamos attached to the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus. Nebuchadnezzar, in the ‘Standard Inscription,’ declares that he plated with copper the folding-doors and the pillars of the Babylon rampart, and it is suspected that gold and silver sheeted the fourth and seventh stages of the Temple of Belus, vulgò the Tower of Babel.