Homer and His Age

by Andrew Lang

(6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the Odyssey.

It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet bespeaks an age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by reputation, "a costly possession." The epithets "iron strength," and so on, may as readily be used in our own age or any other. If iron were at first a "precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men first used it, as Cauer sees that they did, to make points to ploughshares and "tools of agriculture and handiwork." "Then people took to working iron for weapons." Just so, but we cannot divide the Iliad into earlier and later portions in proportion to the various mentions of iron in various Books. These statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is impossible to believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength," "iron hearts," "grey iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because iron was, first, an almost unknown legendary mineral, next, "a precious metal," then the metal of drudgery, and finally the metal of weapons.

The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic preceded military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems, however, to think that the confinement of the use of bronze to weapons is a matter of traditional style. {Footnote: "Nur die Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, während deren der Epische Stil erwachsen war, allein geherrscht hatte."} But, in the early days of the waxing epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer they occasionally are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late continuators represent tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they not cleave to the traditional term—bronze—in the case of tools, as the same men do in the case of weapons?

Helbig offers an apparently untenable explanation of this fact. He has proposed an interpretation of the uses of bronze and iron in the poems entirely different from that which I offer. {Footnote: Sur la Question Mycénienne. 1896.} Unfortunately, one can scarcely criticise his theory without entering again into the whole question of the construction of the Epics. He thinks that the origin of the poems dates from "the Mycenaean period," and that the later continuators of the poems retained the traditions of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae "golden," though, in the changed economic conditions of their own period, Mycenae could no longer be "golden"; and I presume that, if possible, the city would have issued a papyrus currency without a metallic basis. However this may be, "in the description of customs the epic poets did their best to avoid everything modern." Here we have again that unprecedented phenomenon—early poets who are archaeologically precise.

We have first to suppose that the kernel of the Iliad originated in the Mycenaean age, the age of bronze. We are next to believe that this kernel was expanded into the actual Epic in later and changed times, but that the later poets adhered in their descriptions to the Mycenaean standard, avoiding "everything modern." That poets of an uncritical period, when treating of the themes of ancient legend or song, carefully avoid everything modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of the authors of the Chansons de Geste, of Beowulf, and of the Nibelungenlied. These poets, we must repeat, invariably introduce in their chants concerning ancient days the customs, costume, armour, religion, and weapons of their own time. Dr. Helbig supposes that the late Greek poets, however, who added to the Iliad, carefully avoided doing what other poets of uncritical ages have always done. {Footnote: La Question Mycénienne, p. 50.}

This is his position in his text (p. 50). In his note 1 to page 50, however, he occupies the precisely contrary position. "The epic poems were chanted, as a rule, in the houses of more or less warlike chiefs. It is, then, à priori probable that the later poets took into account the contemporary military state of things. Their audience would have been much perturbed (bien chequés) if they had heard the poet mention nothing but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they were unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never do. However, this is Helbig's opinion in his note. But in his text he says that the poets, carefully avoiding the contemporary, "the modern," make the heroes fight, not on horseback, but from chariots. Their listeners, according to his note, must have been bien chequés, for there came a time when they were not accustomed to war chariots.

Thus the poets who, in Dr. Helbig's text, "avoid as far as possible all that is modern," in his note, on the same page, "take account of the contemporary state of things," and are as modern as possible where weapons are concerned. Their audience would be sadly put out (bien chequés) "if they heard talk only of arms ... to which they were unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended shields, of uncorsleted heroes, and of bronze weapons. They had to endure it, whether they liked it or not, teste Reichel. Dr. Helbig seems to speak correctly in his note; in his text his contradictory opinion appears to be wrong. Experience teaches us that the poets of an uncritical age—Shakespeare, for example—introduce the weapons of their own period into works dealing with remote ages. Hamlet uses the Elizabethan rapier.

In his argument on bronze and iron, unluckily, Dr. Helbig deserts the judicious opinions of his note for the opposite theory of his text. His late poets, in the age of iron, always say that the weapons of the heroes are made of bronze. {Footnote: Op. laud., p. 51.} They thus, "as far as possible avoid what is modern." But, of course, warriors of the age of iron, when they heard the poet talk only of weapons of bronze, "aurient été bien choqués" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his note), on hearing of nothing but "armes auxquels ils n'étaient pas habitués,"—arms always of bronze.

Though Dr. Helbig in his text is of the opposite opinion, I must agree entirely with the view which he states so clearly in his note. It follows that if a poet speaks invariably of weapons of bronze, he is living in an age when weapons are made of no other material. In his text, however, Dr. Helbig maintains that the poets of later ages "as far as possible avoid everything modern," and, therefore, mention none but bronze weapons. But, as he has pointed out, they do mention iron tools and implements. Why do they desert the traditional bronze? Because "it occasionally happened that a poet, when thinking of an entirely new subject, wholly emancipated himself from traditional forms," {Footnote: Op. laud., pp. 51, 52}

The examples given in proof are the offer by Achilles of a lump of iron as the prize for archery—the iron, as we saw, being destined for the manufacture of pastoral and agricultural implements, in which Dr. Helbig includes the lances of shepherds and ploughmen, though the poet never says that they were of iron. {Footnote: Iliad, XXIII. 826, 835; Odyssey, XIV. 531; XIII. 225.} There are also the axes through which Odysseus shoots his arrow. {Footnote: Odyssey, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X, 97, 114, 127, 138; XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.} "The poet here treated an entirely new subject, in the development of which he had perfect liberty." So he speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and implements, axes and knives, are not a perfectly new subject!" They were extremely familiar to the age of bronze, the Mycenaean age. Examples of bronze tools, arrow-heads, and implements are discovered in excavations on Mycenaean sites. There was nothing new about bronze tools and implements. Men had bronze tips to their ploughshares, bronze knives, bronze axes, bronze arrow-heads before they used iron.