THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
.Icvons
296 THE HOMERIC AGE.
p.
THE HOMERIC AGE. 295
ci'. Sclidi. \', II. 1! in //. xiK. 2s:i. r,->r>. the part of iron.
weapons were made, and it thus lingered in many phrases in
but of stout steel. Bronze offers
many advantages over iron
the Epic dialect ;
to smite with the chalkos was equivalent to
for defensive armour. It makes a lighter and more beautiful
our phrase 'to smite with the steels' As the smith had
helmet or cuirass, and does not suffer from rust, the great bane
worked in copper and bronze long before he had ever beaten
of the harder metal.
iron on his anvil, he and his smithy derived their names from
To argue then that because the Homeric warrior wore
the earlier known metal, and the terms chalkeus and chalkeion
helmet, breastplate, and greaves of bronze, the Homeric Acheans
continued to designate blacksmith and forge throughout all
were therefore in the Bronze Age, is just as absurd as it would
classical Greek literature, when beyond
all doubt the chief
be to say that we ourselves are in that stage of culture because
metal wrought by the chalkeus was iron.
our firemen wear brass helmets and the French dragoons are
Of course we naturally hear much of bronze armour (-^aXKeia
protected by a brass cuirass.
Tvx(^), and of various other objects made of that metal. But
If it be objected that the passages in the Homeric poems
it does not follow that with the introduction of iron for which mention the use of iron are all the cuttingimplements
interpolations^ of a
and the purposes of the plough and herdsman
later period introduced when all Greeks were employing iron
bronze disappears from use, any more than it follows that as
freely, we at once reply, if such interpolations are found in the
soon as copper and bronze began to be employed, weapons and
case of iron, how is it that there is no reference to the Dorian invasion,
or coined money, or to the numerous Greek colonies that
implements of stone and flint at once ceased to be made or used.
Stone has survived for various purposes such as millstones,
fringed the shores of Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily, and Libya
? Xo
pestles and mortars, and there is evidence to show that axes of
one can deny that there must have been every inducement to
stone were employed side by side with those of bronze. For
foist into the poems passages in praise of the great cities .of
instance in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy there
Ionia and of the Dorian states, and yet the lynx-eyed critics
are sione axes which undoubtedly exhibit in the shape of their
have never succeeded in detecting any such allusion in either
faces the influence of those made of metal. In all ages the
Iliad or Odyssey.
])())r man, who cannot afford to procure an article of the best
As only two rings of iron have been found in the lower city
and most costly material, must content himself with an inferior,
at Mycenae it follows that iron was still very scarce in even the
and long after the discovery of copper and the making of
later Mycenean age, and prcjbably used for finger-rings because
bronze those who could not afford weapons of that metal had
of its magical properties. ^Magnetic iron earl\' attracted the
to ]Mit up with those of stone.
notice of the dwellers around the Aegean, and the fact that the
It would be unnecessary to call attention to so obvious a
mere beating of a piece of iron I'enders it
magnetic always has
fact, were it not that this cataclysmic archaeoh)gy is l)oth very
made' this metal an object of sui)erstiti()n.
widespread and deeply njoted.
Probably this very property
is alluded to in the line of the
As stone continued in use foi- certain objects, and in a
Odyssey just cited, whei'e iron is said to attract a man of
C(M'tain sense the Stone Age has never ceased, so l)fonze
itself,
contiiuu'd to be used for defensive armour through the classical
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