Fuegian tinder, like the modern German and ancient Roman, consists of dried fungus, which when lighted is wrapped in a ball of dried grass and whirled round the head till it bursts into flames. Achates, as will shortly be seen, is described by Virgil as following the same method.
The name of pyrites (from πῦρ) is itself sufficient evidence of the purpose to which this mineral was applied in early times, and the same stone was used as the fire-giving agent in the guns with the form of lock known as the wheel-lock. Pliny[1] speaks of a certain sort of pyrites, "plurimum habens ignis, quos vivos appellamus, et ponderosissimi sunt." These, as his translator, Holland, says, "bee most necessary for the espialls belonging unto a campe, for if they strike them either with an yron spike or another stone they will cast forth sparks of fire, which lighting upon matches dipt in brimstone (sulphuratis) drie puffs (fungis) or leaves, will cause them to catch fire sooner than a man can say the word."
Pliny also[2] informs us that it was Pyrodes, the son of Cilix, who first devised the way to strike fire out of flint—a myth which seems to point to the use of silex and pyrites rather than of steel. The Jews on their return to Jerusalem, under Judas Maccabæus, "made another altar and striking stones they took fire out of them and offered a sacrifice."[3] How soon pyrites was, to a great extent, superseded by steel or iron, there seems to be no good evidence to prove; it is probable, however, that the use of flint and steel was well known to the Romans of the Augustan age, and that Virgil[4] pictured the Trojan voyager as using steel, when—
"silici scintillam excudit Achates,
Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida cirrum
Nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam."
And again, where—
"quærit pars semina flammæ
Abstrusa in venis silicis."[5]
In Claudian[6] we find the distinct mention of flint and steel—
"Flagrat anhela silex et amicam saucia sentit
Materiem, placidosque chalybs agnoscit amores."
At Unter Uhldingen[7] a Swiss lake station where Roman pottery was present, was found what appears to be a steel for striking a
- ↑ Hist. Nat., lib. xxxvi. cap. 19.
- ↑ Lib. vii. cap. 56.
- ↑ II. Macc. X. 3.
- ↑ Æneid, i. v. 174.
- ↑ Æneid, vi. v. 6. See also (Georg. I. 135)—"Ut silicis venis abstrusum excuderet ignem." On this passage Fosbroke remarks (Enc. Ant. i. 307), "A stone with a vein was chosen as now."
- ↑ Eidyllia, V. 42.
- ↑ Keller, "Lake-dwellings," p. 119.
