Читать книгу The Book of the Sword онлайн

115 страница из 138

‘In the Brazen Age,’ unphilosophically says Schlegel (‘Phil. of Hist.’ sect. ii.), ‘crime and disorder reached their height: violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper, and their implements and utensils brass or bronze.’ I should generally translate, with Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Gladstone, the Homeric χαλκός, ‘copper,’ not bronze, chiefly because the former is malleable and is bright, two qualities certainly not possessed by the alloy. There are alloys which are malleable,[176] and others (Dowris copper) which shine; but this is not the case with common bronze, and no poet would note its brilliancy as a characteristic.

Pure copper, however, would generally be used only in lands where tin for bronze, and zinc for brass, were unprocurable: isolated specimens may point only to a temporary dearth. Thus, the Copper Age must have had distinct areas. M. de Pulsky and M. Cartenhac (‘Matériaux,’ &c.) held to a distinct Copper Age between the Neolithic and the Bronze. Dr. John Evans considers the fabrication due to want of tin or to preference of copper for especial purposes. But the types of copper tools, &c., are not transitional.