It is a remarkable fact that the art of chasing gold should have conferred no celebrity upon any person, while that of embossing silver has rendered many illustrious. The greatest renown, however, has been acquired by Mentor. Aside from single pieces only four pairs of vases were ever made by him, and at the present day not one of these, it is said, is any longer in existence, owing to the conflagrations of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus and of that in the Capitol. Varro informs us in his writings that he also was in possession of a bronze statue, the work of this artist. Zopyrus represented the court of the Areopagus and the trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother Clytæmnestra upon two cups valued at twelve thousand sesterces. There was Pytheas also, a work of whose sold at the rate of ten thousand denarii for two ounces: it was a drinking-bowl, the figures on which represented Ulysses and Diomedes stealing the Palladium from Troy. The same artist engraved also, upon some small drinking-vessels, kitchen scenes of such remarkably fine workmanship and so liable to injury, that it was quite impossible to take copies of them by moulding. Teucer, too, the inlayer, enjoyed a great reputation.
All at once, however, this art became so lost in point of excellence, that at the present day ancient specimens are the only ones at all valued; and only those pieces of plate are held in esteem the designs on which are so much worn that the figures cannot be distinguished.
We must, in the next place, give an account of the ores of bronze, an alloy which, in respect of utility, is next in value; indeed the Corinthian bronze comes before silver, not to say almost before gold itself. It is also the standard of monetary value; I have already mentioned that for a great length of time the Roman people employed no coin except bronze, and there is another ancient fact which proves that the esteem in which it was held was of equal antiquity with that of the City itself, the circumstance that the third associated body which Numa established, was that of the braziers.[209]
The most highly esteemed copper is procured beyond the seas; it was formerly obtained in Campania, and at present is found in the country of the Bergomates, at the extremity of Italy. It is said to have been lately discovered also in the province of Germany.