Chapter 6

THE IDAEAN DACTYLS

Fragment #1—Pliny, Natural History vii. 56, 197: Hesiod says that those who are called the Idaean Dactyls taught the smelting and tempering of iron in Crete.

Fragment #2—Clement, Stromateis i. 16. 75: Celmis, again, and Damnameneus, the first of the Idaean Dactyls, discovered iron in Cyprus; but bronze smelting was discovered by Delas, another Idaean, though Hesiod calls him Scythes 1501.