Homer and His Age

and iron. Bronze is employed in the making of weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &c.); iron is employed (and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and imp

the use of iron was becoming more common, or that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the Iliad was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal: the Iliad is a military poem, while the Odyssey is an epic of peace; consequently the Iliad is much more copious in references to bronze than the Odyssey has any occasion to be. Wives are far more frequently mentioned in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, but nobody will argue that therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading, when we remember that ten out of the twenty references are only one reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also proposed to leave six references to iron in the Iliad out of the reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted without detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic formula descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as bronze, g

ich must be of excellent temper, without great weight in proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in Homer for some knives, which are never said to be used in battle (not even for dealing the final stab, like the med

ings (iron rings were common in late Greece). {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.} Iron was scarce in the Cypro-Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with a carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps of iron, one of them apparently the head of a club, were found in Schliemann's "Bu

Odyssey, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.} Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy? {Footnote: Iliad, VII. 472-475.} Athene, disguised as Mentes, is carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for copper. The poets are certainly not descri

); the knife is said to be of iron, in this last passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. {Footnote: Iliad, XI. 844.} It is the knife of Achilles that is called "the iron," and on "the iron" perish the cattle in Iliad, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf says that by "the usual use, th

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onze sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the god. 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

e. If any man used a spear or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets, in an age of iron wea

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,

e 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 {Gree

ls of the carpenter, woodcutter, shipwright, and s

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 Od

s 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 del

ehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even historical n

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 Ho

screpancies and interpolations, critics are

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 s

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 v

d 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? Clea

eology to seeing the bronze sword pass by a gradual transition into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of iron never, in any one specified

re 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 th

; 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 grave

ncident to bronze swords, especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a hilt of wood,

bed 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 britt

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 swor

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 cuirass or helmet did not arise." {Footnote: Classical 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 massive at the top that it was certainly capable of a swashing blow. {

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

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

r 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, crit

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ferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more effective than gu

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

hman 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

ound, if we be

ly 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,

rkritik, pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.} I do not, however, find the mentions of iron useful

iron in these passages 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 a

rts 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

seus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates were made o

iron-a remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axe

hers. 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

king spoken of in Book

en 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

ie Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, w?hrend 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 H

stion of the construction of the Epics. He thinks that the origin of the poems dates from "the Mycenaean period," and that the later continuators of the poems retained the traditions of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae "golden," though, in the changed economic conditions of their own period, Mycenae could no lo

g modern." That poets of an uncritical period, when treating of the themes of ancient legend or song, carefully avoid everything modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of the authors of the Chansons de Geste, of Beowulf, and of the Nibelungenlied. These poets, we must repeat, invariably introduce in

ngs. Their audience would have been much perturbed (bien chequés) if they had heard the poet mention nothing but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they were unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never do. However, this is

(bien chequés) "if they heard talk only of arms ... to which they were unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended shields, of uncorsleted heroes, and of bronze weapons. They had to endure it, whether they liked it or not, teste Reichel. Dr. Helbig seems to speak correctly

weapons of the heroes are made of bronze. {Footnote: Op. laud., p. 51.} They thus, "as far as possible avoid what is modern." But, of course, warriors of the age of iron, when they heard the poe

made of no other material. In his text, however, Dr. Helbig maintains that the poets of later ages "as far as possible avoid everything modern," and, therefore, mention none but bronze weapons. But, as he has pointed out, they do mention ir

XIII. 225.} There are also the axes through which Odysseus shoots his arrow. {Footnote: Odyssey, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X, 97, 114, 127, 138; XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.} "The poet here treated an entirely new subject, in the development of which he had perfect liberty." So he speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and implements, axes and knives, are not a

d axes were as familiar to the age of stone and to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's explanation, therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better explanation is offered, we return to the theory, rejected by Dr. Helbig, that implements and tools were often, not always, of iron, while weapons were of bronze in the age of the poet. Dr. Helbig rejects this opinion. He writes: "We cannot in any way admit that, at a period when the socks of the plough, the lance points of shepherds" (which the poet never describes as of iron), "and axe-heads were of iron, warrior

of large shields, small bucklers, greaves, and corslets. They are obliged to assign contradictory attitudes to their "late poets." It does not seem possible to admit that a poet, who often describes axes as of iron in various passages, does so in his account of a peaceful contest in bowmansh

us and the uses to which Odysseus is to put it have been in the poet's mind all through the conduct of his pl

der Post, 1897.} "Quod Herodoti diserto testimonio novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio nondum inventa erat necdum bene noverant mortales, uti opi

, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the axes and knives already mentioned-which are not spears or swords, and are sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the Odyssey, "Iron of itself doth attract a man." But if this line is genuine and original, it does not apply to the state of things in the Iliad, while it contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which swords and spears are ALWAYS of bronze when their metal is mentioned. If the li

me that Achaean or Pelasgian poets habitually used the traditional Pelasgian term for the metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in songs chanted before victors who had won thei

e in such out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in use everywhere else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had to be satisfied with bronze." {Footnote: Early Age of Greece, p. 305.} Here the poet is allowed to mean what he says. The Phaeacian sword is really of bronze, with silver studs, probably on the hilt (Odyssey, VIII. 401-407), whi

red in many phrases of the Epic dialect; 'to smite with the chalkos' was equivalent to our phrase 'to smite with the steel.'" {Footnote: Early Age of Greece, i. 295.} But we certainly do smite with the steel, while the question is, "DID Homer's men smite with the

pons in England, for they had shields, and spears, and battle-axes, and swords." If you pointed out to him that the Saxon poem spoke of these weapons as made of

he weapons are said to be of iron, but that is the work of the Christian remanieur, or bearbeiter, who introduced all the Christ

vidence would be of no value; they might be dealing throughout in terms for things which were unrepresented in their own age. To prove this possible, it would be necessary to adduce convincing and sufficient examples of early national poets who habitually use the terminology of an age long prior to their own in descriptions of objects, customs, and usages.

badness of the iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable badness of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than Polybius. In the Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Maguússon, chap, xxiv.) we read that Steinthor "was girt with a sword that was cunningly wrought; the hilts were white with silver, and the grip wrapped round with the same, but the strings thereof were gilded." This was a splendid sword, described with the Homeric delight in such things; but the battle-cry arises, and then "the fair-wrought sword bit not when it smote armour,