Iron · Atlas · Falsafa

in the texts

Adab al-wazīrMedieval · Arabic

Iron, invoked in the proverb that iron is cleft by iron to justify setting a wicked agent against wicked adversaries.

for iron is cleft by iron.

ch. 6 ¶ · printed page 51

EpigramsClassical · Greek

A martial metal associated with Ares and future human extraction.

For there shall mortal men get the iron that Ares loves so soon as the Cebrenians shall hold the land.

epigrams ¶

Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq20th Century · Arabic

Iron, whose blackness and hardness illustrate that co-present attributes are not mutually entailing, and which recurs as the material asserted in an argument from ignorance.

if we knew that iron is black and hard, we ought not to measure by it everything we found to be black and judge it to be hard

ch. 3 ¶ · printed page 28

or one who points to a distant thing and says, this is made of iron, and if you do not believe it, tell me of what it is made;

ch. 3 ¶ · printed page 33

Letters to LuciliusImperial · Latin

Metal associated with weaponry and conflict, hidden by nature alongside gold and silver but unearthed by human greed.

gold and silver, and the iron that on account of these never keeps peace, she hid away, as though they were ill committed to us.

letter 94 ¶

De Cultu FeminarumLate Antiquity · Latin

Metal symbolizing chains, persecution, and the instruments of martyrdom in contrast to gold's vanity

For the rest, for Christians the times are always—and now most of all—transacted not with gold, but with iron:

de cultu feminarum ¶