Pliny gives no particulars about the mode of reducing the ore of tin to the metallic state; nor is it at all likely that he was acquainted with the process.
The Latin term for tin was _plumbum album_. _Stannum_ is also used by Pliny; but it is impossible to understand the account which he gives of it. There is, he says, an ore consisting of lead, united to silver. When this ore is smelted, the first metal that flows out is _stannum_. What flows next is _silver_. What remains in the furnace is _galena_. This being smelted, yields _lead_.
Were we to admit the existence of an ore composed of lead and silver, it is obvious that no such products could be obtained by simply smelting it.
Cassiteros, or tin, is mentioned by Homer; and, from the way in which the metal is said by him to have been used, it is obvious that in his time it bore a much higher price, and, consequently, was more valued than at present. In his description of the breastplate of Agamemnon, he says that it contained ten bands of steel, twelve of gold, and twenty of tin (κασσιτεροιο).[57] And in the twenty-third book of the Iliad (line 561), Achilles describes a copper breastplate surrounded with shining tin (φαεινου κασσιτεροιο). Pliny informs us, that in his time tin was adulterated by adding to it about one-third of white copper. A pound of tin, when Pliny lived, cost ten denarii. Now, if we reckon a denarius at 7¾_d._, with Dr. Arbuthnot, this would make a Roman pound of tin to cost 6_s._ 5½_d._ But, as the Roman pound was only equal to three-fourths of our avoirdupois pound, it is plain that in the time of Pliny an avoirdupois pound of tin was worth 8_s._ 7¼_d._, which is almost seven times the price of tin in the present day.
Tin, in the time of Pliny, was used for covering the inside of copper vessels, as it is at this day. And, no doubt, the process still followed is of the same nature as the process used by the ancients for tinning copper. Pliny remarks, with surprise, that copper thus tinned does not increase in weight. Now Bayen ascertained that a copper pan, nine inches in diameter, and three inches three lines in depth, when tinned, only acquired an additional weight of twenty-one grains. These measures and weights are French. When we convert them into English, we have a copper pan 9·59 inches in diameter, and 3·46 inches deep, which, when tinned, increased in weight 17·23 troy grains. Now the surface of the copper pan, thus tinned, was 176·468 square inches. Hence it follows, that a square inch of copper, when tinned, increases in weight only 0·097 grains. This increase is so small, that we may excuse Pliny, who probably had never seen the increase of weight determined, except by means of a rude Roman statera, for concluding that there was no increase of weight whatever.