Ferrum Noricum (Noreia)
About
Ovid himself praised the hardness of the steel dug from these Carinthian hills, and Roman legions armed themselves with weapons forged from Noricum's ore for four centuries. Six smelting furnaces and ten smithing hearths excavated at the Semlach Eisner site trace an industry running continuously since the province's annexation in 16 BCE. By 117 CE ferrum Noricum was the standard steel of the Roman military, prized above every rival source.
What happened here
Work goes on underground by lamplight in shifts, and the lamp is also the clock. Galleries follow the ore, propped with timber, drained by wooden screws and bucket wheels worked by hand in stages up the shaft. Ventilation is a second shaft and a fire to draw the air. The labour is convicts, slaves and paid men working side by side on different terms, and the paid men do the skilled cutting. Above ground the ore is crushed, washed in long channels, and smelted, and the smoke kills the vegetation for miles. Mines of any size are imperial property, leased to contractors under written regulations covering shifts, drainage, bath-house charges and who may open a new gallery. Settlements grow around them fast and empty just as fast.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.144–145
Sets out why iron differs from place to place — the ore, the water it is quenched in — in the passage behind the standing reputation of Noric steel.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →