Corinthian bronze

However, it has been increasingly suggested that a number of artefacts previously described as niello in fact use a technique of patinated metal that may be the same as Corinthian bronze and is similar to the Japanese shakudō.

This is shown by ancient texts to be a prestigious material, and apparently survives in a number of statuettes of "distinctive black-patinated, inlaid metal", of which scientific analysis shows "that some have a highly unusual composition containing small amounts of gold, silver and arsenic in the alloy", and are broadly similar to shakudō.

[3] According to legend, Corinthian bronze was first created by accident, during the burning of Corinth by Lucius Mummius Achaicus in 146 BC, when the city's immense quantities of gold, silver, and copper melted together.

Pliny[8] however, remarked that this story is unbelievable, because most of the creators of the highly valued works in Corinthian bronze in Ancient Greece lived at a much earlier period than second century BC.

... Well, as in the old burning of the Temple at Corinth, by the melting and intermixture of silver and gold and other metals a new compound more precious than any, called Corinthian brass, was formed; so in this continent — asylum of all nations — the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes, of the Africans, and of the Polynesians, will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages, or that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic and Etruscan barbarism.