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Hostile to me is the man as the hatefullest gateway of Hades,

Whoso in thought one thing dare hide and utter another.[226]

Numa ordered the priests to cut their hair with copper, not iron, scissors.[227] Copper vases and kettles as tomb-furniture were found by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ: the museum of the Warwakeion at Athens contains seven of these funeral urns. They have also been met with at Etruscan Corneto and Palestrina, and in Austrian Hallstatt,[228] a cemetery which dates from the days when iron was coming into use, and apparently belongs to a much later period than Mycenæ. The Hindús had a copper coinage, and that of the sub-Himalayan Gangetic provinces appears older than Greek art. There is a copper coin bearing on the reverse the rude figure of a horse, and on the obverse a man with legend in old Buddhist (Pali) letters Khatrapasa Pagámashasa.[229] The Jews, who, like the Etruscans, had a copper coinage, used the metal for offence and defence. As amongst the Philistines, Phœnicians, and Carthaginians, whose relics have been found in the Cannæ Plain, the metal was at first pure. The ‘bow of steel’ (Job xx. 24, Ps. xviii. 34) should be rendered ‘bow of copper,’ either copper-plated or (more probably) so tempered as to be elastic. Goliah of Gath (b.c. 1063), who measured nine feet six inches, carried a target, greaves, a spear with an iron head, and a scale-coat[230] of copper: the spear-head weighed six hundred and the armour five thousand shekels (each 320 grains Troy), or 33·33 and 277·77 lbs.[231] David was armed (1 Sam. xvii. 38) with a helmet of copper. Ishi-benob (b.c. 1018), who was ‘of the sons of the giant,’ carried a spear weighing three hundred shekels (about sixteen and a half pounds) of copper. Finally, Buffon believes that the arms of the ancient Asiatics were cuprine.

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