6. Sheets of soft copper.—The text is "honey-copper." That the metallurgy of Roman days included a fusion with honey or other organic substances, such as cow's blood, to produce greater ductility, has been asserted, but not proven. Müller makes a more plausible suggestion, that this was ductile copper in thin sheets, and was called "honey-copper" because the sheets were shaped like honey-cakes. Ductile copper in Roman times generally meant an alloy with 5 to 10 per cent of lead.
6. Iron.—Pliny (op. cit. XXXIV, 39–46) speaks of iron as "the most useful and most fatal instrument in the hand of man." The ore, he says, is found almost everywhere; "even in the Isle of Elba." It is worked like copper, and its quality depends somewhat on the water into which the red-hot metal is plunged. Bilbilis and Turiasso in Spain, and Comum in Italy, are distinguished for the use of their water in smelting. The best iron is that made by the Seres, "who send it to us with their tissues and skins." Next to this in quality is the Parthian iron. In all other kinds the metal is alloyed, that is, apparently, the ore is impure.
6. Coats of skin. The text is kaunakai.—Originally these were of rough skins with the hair left on; later they were imitated in Mesopotamia by a heaven woolen fabric, suggesting the modern frieze overcoat, which was largely exported. It is not known which is meant here.
6. Ariaca.—This is the northwest coast of India, especially around the Gulf of Cambay; the modern Cutch, Kathiawar and Gujarat. As the name indicates, it was at the time of the Periplus one of the strongholds of the Indo-Aryan races, and incidentally of Buddhism, the religion then dominant among them.
6.Indian iron and steel.—Marco Polo (Yule ed. I, 93) Book I, chap. XVII, mentions iron and ondanique in the markets of Kerman. Yule interprets this as the andanic of Persian merchants visiting Venice, an especially fine steel for swords and mirrors, and derives it from hundwáníy "Indian" steel.
Kenrick suggests that the "bright iron" of Ezekiel XXVII, 19, must have been the same.
Ctesias mentions two wonderful swords of such material which he had from the King of Persia.
Probably this was also the ferrum candidum of which the Malli and Oxydracae sent 100 talents' weight as a present to Alexander.
Ferrum indicum also appears in the lists of dutiable articles under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.
