Homer and His Age Part 11

Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one iron mace, noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever said to be of iron.

The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge in a sword said to be of iron. The G.o.d, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by him to Hector. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.] This bronze sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the G.o.d. The sword of Paris is of bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the Odyssey. [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 334-335] Bronze is the sword which he brought from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus in Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the walls of Ilios. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, X. 162, 261-262] There are other examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably said to be of bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.

Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the Homeric warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any man used a spear or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets, in an age of iron weapons, always spoke of bronze, out of deference to tradition, they must have puzzled their iron-using military patrons.

Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of bronze, like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned, except in the two cases given, not with [blank s.p.a.ce] but with _implements_, which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree "with the iron," that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles "will cut his own throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a thing never used in battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the iron," that is, the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron," that is, through the holes in the blade of the iron axes.

[Footnote: For this peculiar kind of Mycenaean axe with holes in the blade, see the design of a bronze example from Vaphio in Tsountas and Manatt, _The Mycenaean Age_, p. 207, fig. 94.] Thus Homer never says that this or that was done "with the iron" in the case of any but one weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the bow-string to his breast and to the bow." [Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.] Whoever wrote that line was writing in an age, we may think, when arrow-heads were commonly of iron; but in Homer, when the metal of the arrow-head is mentioned, except, in this one case, it is always bronze. The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an early type, the shaft did not run into the socket of the arrow-head; the tang of the arrow-head, on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was whipped on with sinew. [_Iliad_, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method, still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The line about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early enough, for the arrow-head is of a primitive kind--socketless--and primitive is the att.i.tude of the archer: he "drew the arrow to his breast." On the Mycenaean silver bowl, representing a siege, the archers draw to the breast, in the primitive style, as does the archer on the bronze dagger with a representation of a lion hunt. The a.s.syrians and Khita drew to the ear, as the monuments prove, and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean"

archer of the ivory draught-box from Enkomi. [Footnote: Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, vol. x.x.x. p. 210.] In these circ.u.mstances we cannot deny that the poet may have known iron arrow-heads.

We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use of an iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs twice. In _Iliad_, XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships, "they were fighting with sharp axes and battle-axes" ([Greek text: axinai]) "and with great swords, and spears armed at b.u.t.t and tip." At and on the ships, men would set hand to whatever tool of cutting edge was accessible. Seiler thinks that only the Trojans used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging the ships: he follows the scholiast. [Greek text: Axinae], however, [Footnote: _Iliad_, XIII. 611.] may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe," as a Trojan, Peisandros, fights with an [Greek text: Axinae], and this is the only place in the _Iliad_, except XV. 711, where the thing is said to be used as a weapon. But it is not an _iron_ axe; it is "of fine bronze." Only one bronze _battle-axe_, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, is known to have been found in Scotland, though there are many bronze heads of axes which were tools.

Axes ([Greek text: pelekeis]) were _implements_, tools of the carpenter, woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not weapons of war of the Achaeans.

As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a synonym for axe and for knife. [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 485] In _Iliad_, XIII.

391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 114, woodcutters' axes are employed in tree-felling, but the results are said to be produced [Greek text: tanaaekei chalcho], "by the long-edged bronze," where the word [Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze axe for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered by Achilles as a prize for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are _implements_ of iron. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3, 81, 97.]

In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering iron, we read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in chill water, for thus men temper iron." [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391-393.] He is not using iron to make a sword or spear, but a tool-adze or axe. The poet is perfectly consistent. There are also examples both of bronze axes and, apparently, of bronze knives. Thus, though the woodcutter's or carpenter's axe is of bronze in two pa.s.sages cited, iron is the usual material of the axe or adze. Again we saw, when Achilles gives a ma.s.s of iron as a prize in the games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion it into sword or spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or ploughman for domestic implements, [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_ (1902), XXIII. line 30, Note.] so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go to the city for iron implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is scarcely at the proper point of view. He says, [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 835, Note.] "the idea of a state of things when the ploughman and shepherd forge their own tools from a lump of raw iron has a suspicious appearance of a deliberate attempt to represent from the inner consciousness an archaic state of civilisation. In Homeric times the [Greek: chalceus] is already specialised as a worker in metals...."

However, Homer does not say that the ploughman and shepherd "forge their own tools." A Homeric chief, far from a town, would have his own smithy, just as the laird of Runraurie (now Urrard) had his smithy at the time of the battle of Killicrankie (1689). Mackay's forces left their _impedimenta_ "at the laird's smithy," says an eye-witness. [Footnote: Napier's _Life_ Of _Dundee_, iii. p. 724.]

The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his fancy a prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even historical novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely attempted such an effort.

This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived far from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword-blades, which Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the Continent. The Andrea Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the clans were of foreign manufacture. The Highland smiths did such rough iron work as was needed for rural purposes. Perhaps the Homeric chief may have sometimes been a craftsman like the heroes of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus himself, notably an excellent carpenter, may have been as good a sword-smith, but every hero was not so accomplished.

In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural society.

The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the material for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary battle-axe mentioned; and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools, knives, carpenters' axes, adzes, and agricultural implements, with the rare exceptions which we have cited in the case of bronze knives and axes.

Either this distinction--iron for tools and implements; bronze for armour, swords, and spears--prevailed throughout the period of the Homeric poets or poet; or the poets invented such a stage of culture; or poets, some centuries later, deliberately kept bronze for weapons only, while introducing iron for implements. In that case they were showing archaeological conscientiousness in following the presumed earlier poets of the bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.

Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the [blank s.p.a.ce] certainly based on old lays and legends which survive in the Edda, we find that the poets of the _Nibelungenlied_ introduce chivalrous and Christian manners. They do not archaeologise. The poets of the French _Chansons de Geste_ (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) bring their own weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote age of Charlemagne, which they know from legends and _cantilenes_.

Again, the later _remanieurs_ of the earliest _Chansons de Geste_ modernise the details of these poems. But, _per impossibile_, and for the sake of argument, suppose that the later interpolators and continuators of the Homeric lays were antiquarian precisians, or, on the other hand, "deliberately attempted to reproduce from their inner consciousness an archaic state of civilisation." Suppose that, though they lived in an age of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that the old heroes "had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze, and there was no black iron." [Footnote: Hesiod, _Works and Days_, pp.

250, 251.] In that case, why did the later interpolating poets introduce iron as the special material of tools and implements, knives and axes, in an age when they knew that there was no iron? Savants such as, by this theory, the later poets of the full-blown age of iron were, they must have known that the knives and axes of the old heroes were made of bronze. In old votive offerings in temples and in any Mycenaean graves which might be opened, the learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their eyes knives and axes of bronze. [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.

413-416.] The knife of Agamemnon ([Greek: machaira]), which hangs from his girdle, beside his sword, [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 271; XIX. 252.]

corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the handles of these dirks have a ring for suspension. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 204.] But these knives, in Mycenaean graves, are of bronze, and of bronze are the axes in the Mycenaean deposits and the dagger of Enkomi.

[Footnote: _Ibid._, pp. 145, 207, 208, 256. _Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vol x.x.x. p, 214.]

Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the spears and swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who describe them as of bronze, not know that their knives and axes were also of bronze? Why did they describe the old knives and axes as of iron, while Hesiod knew, and could have told them--did tell them, in fact--that they were of bronze? Clearly the theory that Homeric poets were archaeological precisians is impossible. They describe arms as of bronze, tools usually as of iron, because they see them to be such in practice.

The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of affairs, such as no poets could invent and adhere to with uniformity. We are accustomed in archaeology to seeing the bronze sword pa.s.s by a gradual transition into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of iron never, in any one specified case, use iron sword blades or spears.

The greatest chiefs, men said to be rich in gold and iron, always use swords and spears of _bronze_ in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.

The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt, "in the heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves have been explored. The swords pa.s.s from bronze to iron with bronze hilts, and, finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze are fitted with iron edges. Axes of iron were much more common than axes of bronze.

[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 413-416.] The axes were fashioned in the old shapes of the age of bronze, were not of the _bipennis_ Mycenaean model--the double axe--nor of the shape of the letter D, very thick, with two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of Vaphio. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.] Probably the axes through which Odysseus shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr. Monro, and, much earlier, Mr. Butcher and I have argued. [Footnote: _Ibid_.

(1901), vol. ii. Book XIX. line 572. Note. Butcher and Lang, Odyssey, Appendix (1891).]

At Hallstatt there was the _normal_ evolution from bronze swords and axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's men in his time not made this step, seeing that they were familiar with the use of iron? Why do they use bronze for swords and spears, iron for tools? The obvious answer is that they could temper bronze for military purposes much better than they could temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius (ii. 30; ii. 33) for the truly execrable quality of the iron of the Celtic invaders of Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad as, or worse than, British bayonets; they _always_ "doubled up." "Their long iron swords were easily bent, and could only give one downward stroke with any effect; but after this the edges got so turned and the blades so bent that, unless they had time to straighten them with the foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second blow."

[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. 408.] If the heroes in Homer's time possessed iron as badly tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C., they had every reason to prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all their military weapons, while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A woodcutter's axe might have any amount of weight and thickness of iron behind the edge; not so a sword blade or a spear point. [Footnote: Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me that the story of Polybius may be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves are often found doubled up; possibly they are thus made dead, like the owner, and their spirits are thus set free to be of use to his spirit. Finding doubled up iron swords in Celtic graves, the Romans, M. Beinach suggests, may have explained their useless condition by the theory that they doubled up in battle, leaving their owners easy victims, and this myth was accepted as fact by Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth, nor very remote from the events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze grave-weapons in our Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of the warriors of the age of bronze. We later give examples of the doubling up, in battle, of Scandinavian iron swords as late as 1000 A.D.]

In the _Iliad_ we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in dealing a stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to bronze swords, especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a hilt of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight shelf of the bronze hilt riveted with three nails on to the bronze blade.

Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword brake at the hilt." [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVI. 339.] The sword of Menelaus broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of Paris.

[Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 349, 380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze.

[Footnote: _Iliad_ (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby.

The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and, in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once against a lion, once over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and once at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not follow from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword could be used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many thrusts as strokes with the bronze sword in the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Twenty-four cuts to eleven lunges, in the _Iliad_.] As the poet constantly dwells on the "long edge" of the _bronze_ swords and makes heroes use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords were of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton (1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the point against c.u.mberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.

If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as bad as that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference for bronze over iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the fighters do not very often come to sword strokes; they fight mainly with the spear, except in pursuit, now and then. But when they do strike, they cleave heads and cut off arms. They could not do this with bronze rapiers, such as those with which men give point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean gems. But Mr. Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards there are two types of swords in the Mycenaean world--one an exaggerated dagger riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a flat f.l.a.n.g.ed tang running the whole length of the hilt, and covered on either face by ornamental grip plates riveted on. This sword, though still of bronze, can deal a very effective cut; and, as the Mycenaeans had no armour for body or head," (?) "the danger of breaking or bending the sword on a cuira.s.s or helmet did not arise." [Footnote: _Cla.s.sical Review_, xvi. 72.] The danger did exist in Homer's time, as we have seen. But a bronze sword, published by Tsountas and Manatt (_Mycenaean Age_, p. 199, fig. 88), is emphatically meant to give both point and edge, having a solid handle--a continuation of the blade--and a very broad blade, coming to a very fine point. Even in Grave V. at Mycenae, we have a sword blade so ma.s.sive at the top that it was certainly capable of a swashing blow. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's Excavations_, p. _265, fig._ 269.] The sword of the charioteer on the _stele_ of Grave V. is equally good for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut and thrust bronze sword than the one found at Ialysus no gentleman could wish to handle. [Footnote: Furtw.a.n.gler und Loeschke, _Myk. Va._ Taf.

D.] Homer, in any case, says that his heroes used bronze swords, well adapted to strike. If his age had really good bronze, and iron as bad as that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand years later, their preference of bronze over iron for weapons needs no explanation. If their iron was not so bad as that of the Celts, their military conservatism might retain bronze for weapons, while in civil life they often used iron for implements.

The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on the supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used it for implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust life and victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot test the temper of the earliest known iron swords found in Greece, for rust hath consumed them, and I know not that the temper of the Mycenaean bronze swords has been tested against helmets of bronze. I can thus give no evidence from experiment.

There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction--iron for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in _Odyssey_, XVI. 294; XIX.

13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike harness of Odysseus from the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain the removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in your cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and _this_ wooing; _for iron of himself draweth a man to him_." The proverb is manifestly of an age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron except one eccentric mace and one arrow-head of primitive type. The line in the Odyssey must therefore be a very late addition; it may be removed without injuring the sense of the pa.s.sage in which it occurs. [Footnote: This fact, in itself, is of course no proof of interpolation. _Cf._ Helbig, _op_. cit., p. 331. He thinks the line very late.] If, on the other hand, the line be as old as the oldest parts of the poem, the author for once forgets his usual antiquarian precision.

We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early Greece an age when weapons were all of bronze while implements were often of iron, or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented that state of things. Now early poets never invent in this way; singing to an audience of warriors, critical on such a point, they speak of what the warriors know to be actual, except when, in a recognised form of decorative exaggeration, they introduce

"Masts of the beaten gold And sails of taffetie."

Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were composed, iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for reasons not devoid of plausibility.

Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not of iron. [Footnote: Ancient _Bronze Implements_, p. 8 (1881), citing Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. _Iliad_, III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.] Sir John remarks that "for a considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows."

Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and _Odyssey_, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote: _Scutum Herculis_, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600 B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears.

[Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing.

These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M.

Berard's book, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee_ (Paris, 1902). M. Berard has antic.i.p.ated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard, perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword straight...." [Footnote: Berard, i. 435.]

So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.

On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters'

axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led, on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used by sword-smiths.

The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. [Footnote: _Grundfrager des Homerkritik,_ pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.] I do not, however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:--

(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold, and girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague about iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these pa.s.sages is neither more nor less definite than his mental picture of the other commodities. He calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he knows, in fact, all about it. He does not tell us what the owner is going to do with the gold and the bronze and the girls, any more than he tells us what is to be done with the iron. Such information was rather in the nature of a luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses of all four commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.

(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "--said of Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are supposed to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I see no ground for this inference.

(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates were made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the days of St. John.

(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron--a remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron before spears and swords were of iron.

(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut his throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there is no other mention of suicide in the _Iliad_. It does not follow that suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once, since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."

(6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the _Odyssey_.

It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet bespeaks an age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by reputation, "a costly possession." The epithets "iron strength," and so on, may as readily be used in our own age or any other. If iron were at first a "precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men first used it, as Cauer sees that they did, to make points to ploughshares and "tools of agriculture and handiwork." "Then people took to working iron for weapons." Just so, but we cannot divide the _Iliad_ into earlier and later portions in proportion to the various mentions of iron in various Books. These statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is impossible to believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength," "iron hearts," "grey iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because iron was, first, an almost unknown legendary mineral, next, "a precious metal,"

then the metal of drudgery, and finally the metal of weapons.

The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic preceded military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems, however, to think that the confinement of the use of bronze to weapons is a matter of traditional style. [Footnote: "Nur die Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, wahrend deren der Epische Stil erwachsen war, allein geherrscht hatte."] But, in the early days of the waxing epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer they occasionally are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late continuators represent tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they not cleave to the traditional term--bronze--in the case of tools, as the same men do in the case of weapons?