Note 226 — Chapter V · AZTEC AGRICULTURE—MECHANICAL ARTS—MERCHANTS—DOMESTIC MANNERS
Reading edition
P. Martyr, De Orbe Novo, Decades (Compluti, 1530), dec. 5, p. 191.—Acosta, lib. 4, cap. 3.—Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. iii. pp. 114-125.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 34.
“Men wrought in brass,” says Hesiod, “when iron did not exist.”
χαλκῴ δʹ ἐργάϛοντο μέλας δʹ οὐκ ἒσκε σίδηρο Hesiod, Ἒργα καὶ Ἥμεραι.
The Abbé Raynal contends that the ignorance of iron must necessarily have kept the Mexicans in a low state of civilization, since without it “they could have produced no work in metal, worth looking at, no masonry nor architecture, engraving nor sculpture.” (History of the Indies, Eng. trans., vol. iii. b. 6.) Iron, however, if known, was little used by the ancient Egyptians, whose mighty monuments were hewn with bronze tools; while their weapons and domestic utensils were of the same material, as appears from the green color given to them in their paintings.