The subsequence of its invention to the adoption into the Greek language of chrusos, gold, can be inferred from the relative paucity of proper and placenames compounded with it. Homer has only four such, while his ‘golden’ appellations number thirteen. Take as specimens the series Chryse, Chryses, and Chryseïs, designating a place in the Troad, the priest of Apollo in that place, and his daughter, all memorably connected with the tragic Wrath of Achilles. The nomenclature, no doubt, took its rise from solar associations; yet the typical relationship between gold and the sun, silver and the moon, is nowhere in the Epics directly recognised. Helios is never decorated with the epithet ‘golden’; Apollo, if he wears a golden sword, is more strongly characterised by his silver bow. Lunar mythology is ignored; nor is the ready metaphor of the ‘silver moon’ to be found in Homeric verse. The ‘apparent queen’ of the nocturnal sky does not there, as elsewhere in poetry and folk-lore, ‘throw her silver mantle o’er the dark.’ The metallic sheen, on the other hand, of water rippling in sunshine, produces its due effect in the generation of epithets; rivers being habitually called ‘silver-eddying,’ and Thetis, the Undine of the Iliad, wearing a specific badge as ‘silver-footed.’
For the concrete purposes of actual decoration, the metal was in constant Homeric demand. Heré’s chariot and the car of Rhesus shone with its delicate radiance; the chair of Penelope was spirally inwrought with silver and ivory; the greaves of Paris were silver clasped, and the sheath of his sword silver-studded; a silver hilt adorned the weapon of Achilles, and the strings of his lyre were attached to a silver yoke.[[325]] Of silver, too, was the tool-chest of Hephæstus; the guests of Circe ate off silver tables; the guests of Menelaus, if particularly favoured, might have bathed in silver tubs, two of which were presented to him in Egypt; and from golden ewers water was poured into silver basins for the ablutions before meals in every establishment of some pretension. The fittings shared the splendours of the furniture in Odyssean palaces. In the great hall of Alcinous, the door-posts and lintel were of silver, and golden and silver hounds, fashioned by Hephæstus, kept watch beside its golden gates. And the courts of Menelaus were resplendent with gold, bronze, silver, and electrum.
[325]. Iliad, i. 219; ix. 187; Buchholz, Homerische Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 316.
The term ‘electrum,’ however, is a somewhat ambiguous one. In classical Greek, it denotes two perfectly distinct substances, one metallic, the other of organic origin—the latter, indeed, chiefly; the word came to be applied almost exclusively to amber. Or it may be that two primarily distinct words coalesced with time into one. Lepsius has urged the probability that the name of the metal was of the masculine form elektros, while amber was designated by the neuter elektron.[[326]] Nor is it unlikely that these words had separate genealogies, the first being derived from an Aryan root signifying ‘to shine,’ the second from a Semitic name for resin. Phœnician inscriptions may eventually throw light upon a point which must otherwise remain unsettled, by acquainting us with the Phœnician mode of designating amber.
[326]. Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes, p. 60.
The metallic electrum was an alloy of gold with about twenty per cent. of silver. It occurs naturally, but was produced artificially as well, especially in Egypt, where asem, as it was called, came into favour long before any of the pyramids were built. It was in the Nile valley thought fit for goddesses’ wear, its pale radiance suggesting feminine refinement; and stores of it were laid up in the treasures of all the early kings. The first Lydian coinage was of electrum; many of the utensils and ornaments discovered at Hissarlik and Mycenæ prove to be similarly composed; and electrum continued in favour down to a particularly late date in the Græco-Scythic settlements on the Black Sea. It made one of its few historical appearances in the ‘white gold’ offered by Crœsus at Delphi;[[327]] and there are two instances of its epical employment. The ground of the Hesiodic Shield of Hercules was inlaid, the walls of the banqueting-hall of Menelaus were overlaid, with gold, electrum, and ivory. Although, in two other passages of the Odyssey, the same word undoubtedly designates amber, it is safe to affirm that here, where mural incrustations are in question, a metallic substance, none other than the immemorial asem of Egypt, should be understood. Egyptian analogies, as Lepsius many years ago pointed out, strongly support this supposition, above all where Egyptian associations are so marked as in the Odyssean description of the Spartan court. Electrum is unknown in the Iliad. The word occurs only in the form elektor, signifying ‘the beaming sun.’
[327]. Herodotus, i. 50.
The third Homeric metal, and the most important of all, is chalkos. But what does chalkos mean? Copper or bronze? The question is not one to be answered off-hand or categorically. It has been long and learnedly debated; and admits, perhaps, of no decision more absolute than the cautious arbitrament of Sir Roger de Coverley.
No help towards clearing up the point in dispute has been derived from etymological inquiries. The word chalkos is without Aryan equivalents, and can best be explained by means of the Semitic hhalaq, signifying ‘metal worked with a hammer.’[[328]] Its primitive meaning, thus left conjectural, was most probably ‘copper.’ For, from all parts of Europe, evidence has gradually accumulated that the transition from the use of stone to the use of bronze was through a ‘copper age,’ which, though perhaps of short duration, has left relics impossible to be ignored. Indications are even forthcoming among the prehistoric ‘finds’ at Hissarlik, of the tentative processes by which copper was improved into bronze.[[329]] The lower strata of ruins on the site of ancient Troy contained articles and implements of approximately pure copper; nearer the surface, a sensible ingredient of tin was added, augmented, here and there, to the normal proportion for bronze of about twelve per cent. At Mycenæ, domestic vessels were fabricated of copper, weapons and ornamental objects of bronze; and a copper saw, dug from beneath the lavas of Santorin, gives corroborative evidence of the early Greek use of the unalloyed metal.
[328]. Lenormant, Antiquités de la Troade, p. 11.