Now that we have given an account of the advances that the philosophers and poets of that heathen time had made in the sciences, it will be well to show how unskilful their mechanics were in their crafts, that it may be seen how much inconvenience and misery these people had to endure. To begin with the workers in metals: although they were so numerous, and so constantly exercising their calling, they knew not how to make an anvil, either of iron or of anything else, and they could not extract iron, though there were mines of that metal in their land. In their language they call iron quillay. They used certain very hard stones, of a colour between green and yellow, instead of anvils. They flattened and smoothed one against the other, and held them in great estimation because they were very rare. Nor could they make hammers with wooden handles. But they worked with certain instruments made of copper and brass mixed together. These tools were of the shape of dice with the corners rounded off. Some are large, so that the hand can just clasp them, others middling sized, others small, and others lengthened out to hammer on a concave. They hold these hammers in their hands to strike with, as if they were pebbles. They had no files nor graving tools, nor had they invented the art of making bellows for blast furnaces.