Some smith the axe untempered, fiery white,
Dips hissing; for thence comes the iron’s might;
So did his eye hiss, and he roared again.[[352]]
[352]. Odyssey, ix. 391-95 (Worsley’s trans.).
Iron or steel has even reached, in the Odyssey, the stage of proverbial familiarity as the material for arms. Sideros stands for sword in a maxim which may be translated ‘Cold steel masters the man,’[[353]] signifying that when weapons are at hand, bloodshed is not far off. In the Iliad, on the contrary, swords and spears are invariably of bronze; and the commentators’ caveat marks the lines presenting the iron-headed arrow of Pandarus, and the iron mace of Areithöus. The passage, too, is not exempt from their suspicions, in which Achilles offers, as prizes in the Funeral Games, a ‘massy clod’ of freshly-smelted iron, and two sets of iron axe-heads.
[353]. Ib. xvi. 294.
The scanty use made of sideros in the compounding of Homeric epithets,[[354]] no less than its total neglect in the formation of proper names, is a further argument for the comparatively late introduction of the metal. More especially when the plentifulness of derivatives from chalkos is taken into consideration. Nevertheless, a good deal of allowance has to be made, in this matter, for what may be called ethnical caprice. So the Teutons excluded copper from among the elements of their local and personal appellations, while admitting gold and iron; those of the Slavs were coined from gold, silver, and iron; the Celts excluding from employment for the purpose all the metals except iron.[[355]] More decisive is the designation of a smith as chalkeus, irrespective of the particular metal wrought by him, showing that the term had been fixed when neither gold nor iron, but only copper or bronze, was welded in Achæan forges. Nam prior æris fuit quam ferri cognitus usus.
[354]. Beloch, loc. cit. p. 50.
[355]. Schrader and Jevons, op. cit. p. 194.
Iron, copper, and gold served as the Homeric media of exchange. Definitions of value, however, are always by head of oxen. The golden armour of Glaucus, for instance, was worth one hundred, the bronze equipment of Diomed, inconsiderately taken in exchange by the chivalrous Lycian, no more than nine oxen,[[356]] and the figures may be considered to represent the proportionate value of those two metals. Iron probably occupied an intermediate position. It must, however, have been much cheaper in Ithaca than in the Troad. For, since the Taphians are said to have conveyed it in ships to Cyprus, where they bartered it for copper, it was evidently mined and smelted in notable quantities on the mainland of Epirus.