The portrait of a metallurgist, a distinguished and highly regarded profession during antiquity, could correspond to this description by the historian Robert Fossier:
“This man, lord of iron and fire, who works… in front of the villagers, trapped by fear and admiration, is like the lord of the community."
Through his hands and under his control pass the saddles, wheels, knives and plowshares, sickles, axes, axles, tires and barrel rings. He has the lord as a client, and hanging in his forge are the weapons of the warrior that he will straighten or weld again and burnish. He is the master tradesman ... he is not totally separated from the world of the countryside where he can have his own plot of land ... "