Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not of iron. {Footnote: Ancient Bronze Implements, p. 8 (1881), citing Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. Iliad, III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.} Sir John remarks that "for a considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows." Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and Odyssey, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. {Footnote: Scutum Herculis, pp. 122-138.} Hesiod knew better, but was not a consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600 B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears. {Footnote: Evans, p. 18.} By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing.
These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M. Bérard's book, Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssée (Paris, 1902). M. Bérard has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard, perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword straight...." {Footnote: Bérard, i. 435.}
So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.
On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters' axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led, on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used by sword-smiths.
The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. {Footnote: Grundfrager des Homerkritik, pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.} I do not, however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:—
(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold, and girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague about iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these passages is neither more nor less definite than his mental picture of the other commodities. He calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he knows, in fact, all about it. He does not tell us what the owner is going to do with the gold and the bronze and the girls, any more than he tells us what is to be done with the iron. Such information was rather in the nature of a luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses of all four commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.
(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "—said of Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are supposed to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I see no ground for this inference.
(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates were made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the days of St. John.
(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron—a remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron before spears and swords were of iron.
(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut his throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there is no other mention of suicide in the Iliad. It does not follow that suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once, since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."