The keen-edg’d poleaxe, or the shining sword,
The red-hot metal hisses in the lake, &c.[732]
And he would, doubtless, know that steel is softened by simple exposure to gradual heating. Síderos is common wrought iron; so we find σιδήρεον for the Iron Age[733] and σίδηρος πολιός,[734] which should be translated, not ‘hoary,’ but ‘iron-grey.’ The ‘black’ (dark-blue) ‘Cyanus’ (κύανος) mentioned by the ‘Iliad,’[735] would be a fusible or artificial steel made to imitate the true blue-stone or lazulite (Theophrastus, 55).[736] The adamas (ἀδάμας) of Hesiod,[737] who specifies the iron of the Cretan Idæi Dactyli, would be a white and tempered metal; while χάλυψ (steel in general) either named or was named by the well-known Chalybes. That the harder substance was not rare, we see by the injunction,[738] ‘Do not, at a festive banquet of the gods, pare from the five-pointed branch (hand) with bright steel, the dry from the fresh’: i.e. don’t cut your nails at dinner. So at the Battle of the Ships,[739] Homer studs a great sea-fighting Xyston (pole), twenty-two cubits long, with spikes of iron; and elsewhere speaks of a ‘cyanus-footed table.’[740]
Yet copper was the metal for arms and armour. While the shield of Hercules was made of alabaster (not ‘gypsum’), ivory, elektron (the mixed metal) and (pure) gold, the hero is armed with a ‘short spear tipped with gleaming copper’;[741] and he fastens around his shoulders a ‘Sword, the averter of destruction,’ which the context suggests to be of the same material. The ‘fair-haired Danaë’s son, equestrian Perseus,’[742] bears a Sword of copper with iron sheath hanging by a felt-thong (μελάνδετον ἄορ).[743] The seven-hide shield of Ajax[744] was χάλκεος, of copper—not ‘brass-bound’ as Lord Derby has it. The lambs’ throats are cut with the ‘cruel copper’ (χαλκός),[745] and Diomede pursues Venus with the same weapon.[746] Hephaistos makes for Achilles a shield of gold and silver, copper and tin;[747] and canny Diomede’s armour[748] is of copper, which he changes for gold, ‘the value of a hundred beeves for the value of nine.’
In the ‘Iliad’ close-handed combat succeeds to missile-using. As Strabo remarks,[749] Homer makes his warriors begin their duellos by weapon-throwing and then take to their Swords. But the latter is the weapon, rivalled only by the hand-spear. Hence the Egyptian-taught Argives are insulted as arrow-throwers;[750] and Diomede reviles his foe as ‘an archer and woman’s man.’[751] The taunts are still known to savage tribes of modern day.
The Homeric Sword has five names. The first is Chalcos (copper, and perhaps base metal), used like the Latin ferrum. The second is Xiphos, a word still generic in Romaic poetry and prose; the diminutive being Xiphidion. The third is Phásganon, pronounced Phásghanon,[752] and the fourth is Aor. Thrace,[753] a famous manufactory of art-works even in early ages, produced the best and largest of these blades; we find a Thracian Xiphos, possibly of steel, ‘beautiful and long,’ in the hands of the Trojan prince Helenos;[754] and Achilles at the funeral games offers as a prize a Thracian Phásganon, fair and silver-studded.[755] This hero[756] was drawing his mighty Xiphos[757] from the sheath (κολεός, culeus, vagina, scabbard) to assault Agamemnon, when at Athene’s instance, ‘still holding his heavy hand upon the silver hilt, he thrust back the great Sword into the scabbard.’ The Xiphos with silver studs or bosses occurs in sundry places,[758] and one, with a gold hilt and a silver scabbard fitted with golden rings, belongs to Agamemnon. Dr. Schliemann explains the epithet Πάμφαινον[759] by the line of gold bosses lying near one of the Swords; they were broader than the blade and covered the whole available space along the sheath. Thus the Homerid’s Helos (ἥλος), usually rendered ‘stud’ or ‘nail,’ was applied to the bosses, or buttons, that break the mid-rib or that stud the blade near the handle.[760] Paris slings on a copper silver-studded Xiphos.[761] Menelaus, with the same weapon, strikes off his enemy’s Phalos—the helmet-ridge bearing the Lóphos-tube which confines the Hippouris or horse-tail crest. Patroclus, when arming himself,[762] hangs from his shoulders the silver-studded Xiphos of copper (ξίφον ἀργυρόηλον, χάλκεον); and Achilles has a large-hilted Xiphos.[763] Peneleos and Lycon,[764] having missed each other with the spear, ran on with the Xiphos, which is here again called Phásganon; but Lycon’s weapon broke at the hilt (καυλός = caulis), and the Xiphos of Peneleos ‘entered, and only the skin retained it; the head hung down and the limbs were relaxed.’ On the shield of Achilles[765] Hephaistos[766] figures youths wearing the golden Xiphos slung from silver belts.
Fig. 240.—Two-edged Bronze Sword and Alabaster Knob (Mycenæ).
Opposed to the Xiphos, a straight ‘rapier blade,’ as we shall presently see, was the φάσγανον or dirk, probably a throwing-weapon like the Scax and Scramasax. The two are often confounded in the dictionaries. Phásganon is supposed to be quasi Σφάγανον, a euphonic transposition, like the verb φασγάνειν (to slay with the Sword). The root is evidently Σφαγ, which appears in σφάγη (slaughter) and in σφάγειν (to slay): there is also a form φάσλανον for σφάλανον. This is a two-edged leaf-shaped blade (φάσγανον ἄμφηκες):[767] Thrasymedes gives one to Diomede, and with it Rhesus is slaughtered in his sleep. The word frequently occurs: black-hilted Phásgana, with massive handles, are mentioned,[768] and the common Phásganon is found in ‘Odys.’ xi. 48; in Pindar (N, 1. 80), and in the Tragedians. In another passage,[769] however, it becomes a large (μέγα) Phásganon.
The fourth term is ἄορ,[770] usually set down, like the English ‘brand,’ as poetical; it is not used in Romaic and the Neo-Greek dictionaries ignore it. The Aor seems to mean a broad, stout, strong blade. With the sharp Aor (ἄορ ὀξὺ) drawn from his thigh, Ulysses digs the furrow one cubit wide,[771] and Hector cuts in two the ashen spear of Ajax.[772] Automedon draws a long Aor.[773] This, too, is the weapon of earth-shaking Neptune, the ‘dreadful tapering Sword’ (τανύηκες ἄορ),[774] ‘thunder-bolt-like, wherewith it is not possible to engage in fatal fight, for the fear of it restrains mankind.’[775] Phœbus Apollo has a golden Aor (χρυσάωρ).[776] Here we see the vague meaning of the poetic word, like our ‘hanger,’ for it now means the god’s golden bow and quiver carried on the shoulder.