Note 1054 — Chapter VII · Corinth

Mau, ap. Pauly Wissowa s.v. fornax, calls all three furnaces (i.e. Saglio, figs. 937, 2964–5) Schmiedeöfen and says they served a double purpose, partly to raise iron to a glowing heat for the smithy, partly to smelt metals more easily molten (e.g. copper, bronze). On these vases as melting pots cp. Gerhard, Trinkschalen, p. 22 (Schmelzkessel); Furtwaengler, Berl. Cat. 2294 [“above, a round cauldron with lid (inside it metal?)”]. So Saglio and de Launay ap. Saglio Dict. d. Ant. s.v. Caelatura, p. 790, ferrum, p. 1090, n. 6. For the way metals may have been smelted in these vases cp. Diod. III. 14 (from Agatharcides, describing the mining and working of gold in “Furthest Egypt” (περὶ τὰς ἐσχατιὰς τῆς Αἰγύπτου) under the Ptolemies). When the metal has been pounded and washed and the gold dust (ψῆγμα) is left behind “finally other skilled workmen (τεχνῖται) take what has been collected and cast it into earthenware pots (εἰς κεραμεοὺς χύτρους); and mixing in the right proportions lumps of lead and grains of salt and further a little tin and some barley bran, they put that in too, and having made a well fitting lid and carefully sealed it (περιχρίσαντες) with clay, they heat it on a furnace for five days and nights without a break. Then letting it cool they find nothing left in the vases (ἀγγείοις) but the gold.” If the process thus described is open to criticism it should be remembered (Bluemner, Gewerbe u. Künste, IV. 132) that Diodorus was not a metallurgist, and that ancient methods were probably far from perfect, even of their kind. Bluemner, ibid. IV. p. 363, regards Saglio 2964 (above, fig. 27) as a smithy. For κάμινος = smithy cp. e.g. Lucian, Prometh. 5. But the furnace here is too big and elaborate for a smithy. None of our three vase pictures shows an anvil. What Bluemner ibid. calls a small anvil is too small to be an anvil at all; cp. the lump of iron in the same picture and also Bluemner’s own fig. 53, which shows an anvil of a natural size; cp. too the similar projections to Bluemner’s supposed anvil in the corresponding position on the furnaces of our other two vase pictures, both of which projections are obviously not anvils. The picture of an unquestionable smithy, Bluemner, fig. 53, shows a quite different type of furnace, not half a man’s height, called in Bluemner “ein niedriger konisch geformter Schmelzherd.” The heavy hammers in Saglio, Dict. d. Ant. fig. 2964, do not prove a smithy; they may have been used for various other purposes, e.g. breaking up the ore; cp. Diod. V. 13 (Aithalia in Etruria), τοὺς λίθους καίουσιν ἔν τισι φιλοτέχνοις καμίνοις ... (καὶ) ... καταμερίζουσιν εἰς μεγέθη σύμμετρα ... ταῦτα ἔμποροι κομίζουσιν εἰς τὰ ἐμπόρια. Or smelting and forging may have gone on simultaneously in the same works.