Homer and His Age

Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will cut his own throat. {Footnote: IliadXVIII. 34.} But no knife is ever used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats of victims (see Iliad, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); 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 knifeof 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, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of small size." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, xxiii. 30, Note.} This is incorrect; the Odyssey speaks of great axeshabitually made of iron. {Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391.} But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon, used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III. 271-292.

The only two specimens of weaponsnamed by Homer as of iron are one

arrow-head, used by Pandarus, {Footnote: Iliad, IV. 123.} and one

mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithцus. To fight with an iron

mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and

caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The

Mace man." {Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.} The case is mentioned by Nestor

as curious and unusual.

Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron casse tкtein a

pleasant way. Since he wrote his Companion to the Iliad, 1902, he has

become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro,

Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Blass, that the origin of our

Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of

Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered"

freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this

passage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the

tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late

work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but

rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus."

{Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.} If Pisistratus was pleased

with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a right to interfere, but we

need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).

Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, {Footnote: Iliad,

XXIII. 850.} and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow

through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey.

But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but peaceful

implements.

As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's

warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron,

in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.

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 god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by him to Hector. {Footnote: IliadXVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.} This bronze 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 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 space} 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 attitude 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 Assyrians 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 Institute, vol. xxx. p. 210.} In these circumstances we ca

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 butt 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 ironaxe; 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.