The World of Homer
But he adds the strange peculiarity that the weapons, but for a single
arrow-head[8] and an iron mace, mentioned as the peculiar fancy of
a warrior when Nestor was young,[9] are always of bronze, while the
tools and the masses of metal out of which they are forged are usually
of iron. This fact has often been the subject of comment.[10] Of the
critics mentioned in the note below, Helbig and Cauer think that the
steady mention by Homer of bronze for weapons is 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 used in battle); the wheelwright is said to
fell a tree "with the iron," though Odysseus trims the wood of his bed
"with the bronze." Achilles, it is feared, will cut his own throat
"with the iron" (knife); the cattle struggle when slain "with the
iron"--the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron,"
through the holes in the axes. But no man, in battle, strikes with or
dies under "the iron." This distinction could not have been uniformly
maintained throughout several centuries by poets living in an age of
iron weapons.
Naber and Bérard, unlike Cauer and Helbig, give the obvious explanation
that when iron came in, but its manufacture and the sharpening of
it were ill understood, men 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 view which
occurred to myself before I had read the works of Naber and Bérard; but
I then knew no proof that a stage of iron tools and bronze weapons had
ever existed.
As Monsieur Bérard puts the case, "I might almost say that iron is the
popular metal ... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it
without going to 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, who had the rough iron work done on the
estate, but always imported their sword _blades_ from the Continent.
The hilts were made at home, basket hilts.[12]
Knives, never said to be used in war, agricultural and pastoral
implements, and axes, though occasionally of bronze, are usually of
iron in the Epics.[13] No graves opened in Greek soil have as yet
yielded iron tools accompanied by bronze weapons alone. Mr. Arthur
Evans, however, who accepts the view that Homer describes an actual
period of bronze for weapons, iron for tools, writes, "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 implements_ are of iron. Gezer was in
touch with Aegean art; a bronze sword-blade of the Cnossian "horned"
type (the hilt turning up like two horns) was found there.[15] Gaza
also had "her Minoan traditions and the cult of the Cretan Zeus."
Jewellery of late Aegean taste has been found at Gezer; and the
Philistines are suspected of being settlers from Crete, whether Aegean
or Achaean.
In the present state of knowledge we can say safely that Homer, with
his bronze weapons and iron tools, has not invented a state of culture
that never existed. The relative 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; nobody could invent
it; but no Homeric cairn with buried weapons and tools has ever been
discovered, and if any had been found, they would long ago have been
plundered.
There are two lines, or rather one line is twice repeated in the
_Odyssey_, which give the _démenti_ to the uniform descriptions in both
Epics. Odysseus bids Telemachus hide the weapons in the hall, and, if
asked why he does it, reply that the Wooers in their cups may quarrel,
and 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_, in
which weapons are always of bronze, its maker has let out that all the
other makers have been saying what they do not mean; and in an age of
iron, or overlap of bronze-and iron, have consistently maintained that
all weapons are of bronze, while tools are of iron, as a rule.
Helbig and others[17] think the line a very late intrusion; it may
be removed without altering the sense of the passage. Mr. Monro, on
_Odyssey_, xix. 1-50, discusses the question fully. "Ancient and modern
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 intended to
lead up to it." But Kirchoff (_Odyssey_, p. 560) reverses the process,
the second appearance of the passage is the earlier. Mr. Monro argues
that _both_ passages "are additions to the original context."
It is essential to the whole story that the Wooers, who, of course,
wear swords, as was universally done in time of peace, should, when
attacked by arrows, need shields and spears to throw. The interpolator,
if interpolator there were, thought that, in ordinary circumstances,
shields and spears would be hanging on the walls of the hall, as in
the Ionian house of Alcaeus (Fragm. 15, Bergk.).
We do not know from other descriptions of Homeric halls that this was
the custom in Homer's age; it is nowhere mentioned.
The war-gear in the palace of Cnossus was certainly stored apart in
special chambers. Suppose, then, that a late poet, accustomed to see
war-gear arranged on walls, had the opportunity to introduce the
practice into the _Odyssey_, he would inevitably cause confusion; and
the passage does cause great confusion, as Mr. Monro proves in his long
note.
(1) The moment foreseen and prepared for by Odysseus never arrives, and
that is quite contrary to "the Epic manner."
(2) It is a weaker argument, that the speech about arms tempting men
to use them disregards the fact that the Wooers wear swords; what they
need under the rain of arrows is shields and throwing spears. For these
they send the Goatherd to the store-chamber, where, in fact, they were
probably kept in a Homeric house, not, as in the case of Alcaeus, on
the walls.
(3) The use of "iron" for "weapon" is, as Mr. Monro says, an
anachronism.
(4) The vocabulary "has a post-Homeric stamp." Of this I am no judge;
but I point out later what Mr. Monro omits to notice, that in the first
passage, xvi. 296, the δοιὰ βοάγρια χερσιν ἑλέσθαι is archaeologically
utterly un-Homeric (cf. p. 103); while the command to bring two βοάγρια
and spears, as Mr. Monro says, is not repeated nor carried out in the
second passage; again contrary to the manner of the Epic.
(5) In _Odyssey_, xxii. 23-25, when Odysseus has shot Antinous, the
Wooers look at the wall to find spears vainly; but why? They do not
expect a fight, they think (xxii. 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 hit a mark that
no man has struck before. The words about their looking to the walls
for weapons "are an interpolation, and prove nothing about the removal
of the arms."
(6) Mr. Monro renders the speech of Melanthius (xxii. 139-141) in
this manner: "Go to, I will bring you gear to arm you from the
store-chamber, for the arms are in their place (ἔνδον), I think, and
Odysseus and his sons have not put them elsewhere." Melanthius merely
means that the armour has not been moved by Odysseus and Telemachus
from its natural place, the store-chamber; he will there find what is
needed.
(7) The passage in Book xxiv. 164-166, where the ghost of Amphimedon
tells the story of the removal of the arms to Agamemnon in Hades, is
late, like all Book xxiv. It is possibly later than the passage about
removing the arms from the hall.
Averse as I am to theories of interpolation, the whole passage in which
"iron" is made a synonym for "weapon" is rich in the non-Epic manner as
well as matter, and causes very un-Homeric confusions. Critics of all
shades of opinion recognise this, and I do not object to the line about
iron merely because it is as fatal to my theory as it is friendly to
that of Mr. Ridgeway.[18]
In this case the line contradicts the whole of both Epics, which in
itself provokes suspicion; just as a single passage in which cavalry
were introduced, or burials by humation were introduced, or armorial
bearings on small bucklers appeared, would rightly be deemed a late
interpolation.
This line apart, the two Epics seem uniform work of a peculiar stage,
the Gezer stage, of the overlap of bronze and iron.
Hesiod knew all about the Bronze Age, and knew that his was the age of
iron, whereas the ancients tooled with bronze, "and there was no black
iron." Put Hesiod at 700 B.C., and we wonder why "late poets" about
that date gave iron tools but bronze weapons to the Achaeans.[19]
The line in the _Odyssey_ is found, one must add, in most suspicious
circumstances, and in the worst of company. It first appears in
_Odyssey_, xvi. 294, when Odysseus, at the house of Eumaeus, is
prophesying to Telemachus about the misbehaviour of the Wooers. He bids
his son, at his nod, to conceal the arms and the weapons in the hall,
and if asked why he has done so, reply that they afford occasion for
brawls, as "iron draws a man to him." The passage goes on, "but for us
alone leave two swords, two spears, and two shields to grasp with our
hands" Here the word for shields is βοάγρια, 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 conservative critic defend it. As the
dubious passage of the _Odyssey_ concerning iron contains the same
non-Homeric word for shields as the indubitably false passage of the
_Iliad_, and as the poet of the _Odyssey_ expects the shields to be
held in the hand (_an die Arme zu nehmen_, Faesi) while Homer's shields
are always suspended by baldrics, it is clear that the Odyssean passage
with the mention of iron as synonymous with weapon is rather more than
_suspect_.
The line recurs[21] in changed circumstances when Telemachus and
Odysseus together remove the weapons, but do not leave two swords, two
spears, and two shields (βοάγρια) for themselves. Everything falls out
otherwise than Odysseus had practically prophesied in Book xvi., when
we come to the slaying of the Wooers in Book xxii.
This would mean nothing in a modern novel; but, as Mr. Monro says, in
Homer it is singular; it would be more in his manner to let events
exactly fulfil the boding of Odysseus. I have proved that the whole
passage not only contradicts the uniform tenor of the two Epics as to
bronze weapons, but causes hopeless confusion, has the most suspicious