Next to copper comes the metal known as iron, at the same time the most useful and the most fatal instrument in the hand of mankind. For by the aid of iron we lay open the ground, we plant trees, we prepare our vineyards, and we force our vines each year to resume their youthful state, by cutting away their decayed branches. It is by the aid of iron that we construct houses, cleave rocks, and perform so many other useful offices of life. But it is with iron also that wars, murders, and robberies are effected, and this, not only hand to hand, but from a distance even, by the aid of missiles and winged weapons, now launched from engines, now hurled by the human arm, and now furnished with feathery wings. The last I regard as the most criminal artifice that has been devised by the human mind; for, as if to bring death upon man with still greater rapidity, we have given wings to iron and taught it to fly.[227] Let us therefore acquit Nature of a charge that here belongs to man himself.

In the treaty which Porsena granted to the Roman people, after the expulsion of the kings, we find it expressly stipulated, that iron shall be only employed for the cultivation of the fields; and our oldest authors inform us, that in those days it was considered unsafe to write with an iron pen, or stylus.

Still human industry has not failed to employ iron for perpetuating the honors of more civilized life. The artist Aristonidas, wishing to express the fury of Athamas subsiding into repentance, after he had thrown his son Learchus from the rock, blended copper and iron, in order that the blush of shame might be more exactly expressed, by the rust of the iron making its appearance through the shining substance of the copper; a statue which still exists at Rhodes. There is also, in the same city, a Hercules of iron, executed by Alcon, the endurance displayed by the god in his labors having suggested the idea. We see too, at Rome, cups of iron consecrated in the Temple of Mars the Avenger. Nature, in conformity with her usual benevolence, has limited the power of iron, by inflicting upon it the punishment of rust; and has thus displayed her usual foresight in rendering that substance the most perishable, which brings the greatest dangers upon perishable mortality.

Iron ores are to be found almost everywhere. But of all the different kinds the palm of excellence is awarded to that which is made by the Seres, who send it to us with their tissues and skins; next to which, in quality, is the Parthian iron. None of the other kinds of iron are made of the pure hard metal, a softer alloy being welded with them all. In our part of the world, a vein of ore is occasionally found to yield a metal of this high quality, as in Noricum, but in other cases, it derives its value from the mode of working it.