The World of Homer

s or tools: at least no such relics have been discovered. Homer, on the other hand, is thoroughly familiar wi

Lemnos, sent by Euneos, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, a princess of that island.[2] Lemnos seems to have been rich in

an age of "overlap." Remains of such ages are common on European sites almost everywhere; the explorer finds in the

s, we find weapons of bronze fitted with iron edges, then swords with i

he Aegean forms of decoration: in fact it was in the period to which we may assign Homer.[5] Other tholos tombs near the same site contained vessels Aegean in shape, with geometric ornament, and an iron dagger, and bronze fibulae and bracelets, o

a mere tradition of the epic, maintained by poets in the Iron Age. It would be interesting to find any such tradition in any other literature of the early Iron Age. But we do not find it. Moreover, the lays of the Bronze Age, when they mentioned tools, must have said that they were of bronze, as Homer occasionally does; but we are not told why later poets maintained the bronze tradition for weapons, but spoke of tools as iron. As in the case of the arrow-head it is called "the iron," so in the case of tools, and of knives (not us

n would make heavy axes and other rural implements of iron, but would not trust their lives to iron weapons which were brittle or which "doubled up." This is the vi

o the town."[11] It is probable that the princes who had lands remote from towns kept each his own smithy for rough work, like Highland chiefs in 1680-1745

"This corresponds with a distinct phase of archaeological evidence. Thus in the Cypro-Minoan tomb at Enkomi the weapons were of bronze, but small iron knives also occurred (Murray, Excavations in Cyprus, p. 25)."[14] The Homeric state of affairs is illustrated by Mr. MacAllister's diggings in a certain stratum of the ancient city of Gezer in Palestine. All weapons are of bronze, all

elative uses of excellent bronze for spears and swords, and of dubious iron for implements, were perfectly natural. Homer probably saw this stage in actual life; nob

nd use the arms, and "shame the feast, and this wooing, for iron of himself draws a man to him."[16] This is a proverbial expression of the age when iron is, at least, the dominant if not the only metal for weapons. If, then, this line be as old as the rest of the Odyssey, i

n critics," he says, "are generally agreed that the first mention of 'iron' as synonymous with 'weapon'" (Od. xvi. 294), and the rest of the passage, "is an interpolation founded on xix. 1-50, and intend

when attacked by arrows, need shields and spears to throw. The interpolator, if interpolator there were, thought that, in ordinary

f Homeric halls that this was the custom

et, accustomed to see war-gear arranged on walls, had the opportunity to introduce the practice into the Odyssey, h

or by Odysseus never arrives, and that

r swords; what they need under the rain of arrows is shields and throwing spears. For these they send the Goatherd to th

r "weapon" is, as Mr. Mo

irst passage, xvi. 296, the δοι? βο?γρια χερσιν ?λ?σθαι is archaeologically utterly un-Homeric (cf. p. 103); while the command to bring t

. 31, 32) that Odysseus, aiming at some other mark, has shot Antinous by accident. In xxii. 5-7 he has said, enigmatically, that he will try, with Apollo's aid, to hi

amber, for the arms are in their place (?νδον), I think, and Odysseus and his sons have not put them elsewhere." Melanthius merely means

tory of the removal of the arms to Agamemnon in Hades, is late, like all Book xx

on-Epic manner as well as matter, and causes very un-Homeric confusions. Critics of all shades of opinion recognise this, and

ust as a single passage in which cavalry were introduced, or burials by humation were introduced

orm work of a peculiar stage, the Gezer

cients tooled with bronze, "and there was no black iron." Put Hesiod at 700 B.C., and we wo

on, "but for us alone leave two swords, two spears, and two shields to grasp with our hands" Here the word for shields is βο?γρια, which occurs in no other line of Iliad or Odyssey except Iliad, xii. 22; while the following line (23), mentioning "demigods," "takes us at once away from the Homeric world, and opens an entirely new order of conceptions."[20] "The most careless critics," says Mr. Leaf, cannot pass this passage in the Iliad, nor can the most

not leave two swords, two spears, and two shields (βο?γρια) for themselves. Everything falls out otherwise t

whole passage not only contradicts the uniform tenor of the two Epics as to bronze weapons, but causes hopeless confusion, has the most suspicious associations, and contravenes the Homeric practice o

5, 366, x. 379, xi. 133;

d, vii.

id. vi

y Age of Greece, v

S., 1907

ial and the

storic Tombs of

iad, i

i. 141

iciens et l'Odyssée, 1902, vol. i. 435. Cauer, Grundfragen des Hom

d, xxiii.

ol. iii. p. 724. Notices in th

gh which Odysseus shot the arrow (nine times in the Odyssey). Battle-axe; this is of bronze (Iliad, xiii. 611, ?ξ?νη), axes as tools ar

inoa, vol. i.

istoric Tombs of

ey, xvi. 2

rische Ep

95, 296. Mr. Ridgeway does not notice t

Works and D

Iliad, vol.

yssey,

Odyssey. There is scarcely a critic, whatever his views, who does not suspect the passages which we have been discussing. If Mr. Murray does not see evidence of un-Homeric confusion in the passages, his view is peculiar; and if I am biassed, when I see those signs, by my i