BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS

Fig. 9—Costume of Women—Tirynthian Vase.

Now undoubtedly the fibula, and therefore the unsewn and unshaped female attire, did come in at the close of the Aegean or Mycenaean period in Greece; but, as far as I can interpret the art of very old Tirynthian and some Dipylon vases, there was an early post-Homeric period wherein women adopted the short hood-capes, the tight waists, the heavy skirts, and the princessfrock.[8]This attire more resembles the Aegean than the Homeric and Hellenic. The "hood-cape" of Tirynthian art may conceivably be the κρήδεμνον, καλύπτρα or κάλυμμα of Homer; but if so, it reveals below it a waist of more than Aegean tightness, not the belted peplos. Such are the characteristics of Dipylon art, and of Tirynthian art which may have arisen before 900 B.C. It is hardly possible that if, in that age, women wore the loose Homeric peplos, the artists should have represented them with impossibly narrow waists, with the bosom fully displayed, and with heavy skirts. The women of this dark age, as far as art can enlighten us, had broken away from, or at all events are not wearing, the Homeric peplos.

This is, at least, my private interpretation of the Dipylon and the Tirynthian representation. But it is offered with diffidence, and is not shared by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the British School of Athens. He "does not believe that the Dipylon women's dress is necessarily a tight one," and attributes the wasp waists to the limited skill of the early artist, thinking that if he had to draw a woman in a loose flowing dress he would still give her a tiny waist, because a small waist is one of the conspicuous points in the female figure. In the effort to give as much information as possible he would draw the small waist even if it were concealed by a loose dress. The primitive artist draws not from models, but from mental images.

There is much truth in this; for example, the ladies in a palaeolithic rock-painting[9]have very slim waists, clearly exaggerated, above skirts with a crescentine scoop at the bottom. But the primitive artist certainly draws under the domination of a convention which differs in different places. The woman whose figure is repeated in the clay disk from Phaestus[10]hasno more waist than the stout person in a princess frock from Tiryns. The Dipylon artists may be continuing the Aegean convention of the wasp waist; though the designer of the princess frock is as candid as the Phaestos artist. Thus the reader must interpret the Dipylon waist as he pleases.

We next reach the "archaic" art of, say, the seventh to sixth centuries. The chief article of female dress, as described by Homer, was the peplos, "a square or rectangular piece of material which," like the men's outer mantle, "could be used for various purposes." It was fastened by pins or brooches (περόναι, ἐνεταί), and theπερόνηwas sometimes a fibula or safety pin, the cover adorned by art, as in the case of theπερόνηof Odysseus (Od. xix.). But when (Iliad, v. 425) Athene mockingly tells Zeus that the wounded Aphrodite must have scratched her hand, while caressing some Achaean woman, on herπερόνη, the term "safetypin," orfibula,does not apply. We think rather of one of the long sharp stiletto-like pins found in Egyptian deposits of from about 1450 to 1200 B.C. and also at Enkomi in Cyprus, and at Sparta in the Orthia sanctuary from 900 to 500 B.C.[11]Fibulae of the same date also occur. These great pins had ribbed handles, and below the handle was a perforation or a metallic loop.[12]Now very long pins, also with ribbed handles, but without the aperture in the middle, fasten the peplos of one of the Fates on the Francis vase, which Mr. Evans dates in "the seventh century," but Mr. Walters—from the characters in the inscriptions on the vase—dates about 570-550 B.C.[13]The Spartan evidence for the pin and fibulae covers the later range of dates.

Fig. 10.—Metope of Athene, Olympia.

Much turns on the date of the François vase, for manycritics, with Studniczka, consider that the costume of the female figures is like that which Homer's women wear, and is a "Doric peplos." Thus Miss Abrahams, in her Greek Dress (1908, pp. 29, 30) studies the arraying of Hera.[14]Of her dress Homer says, χρυσείῃς δ' ἐνετῇσι κατὰ στῆθος περονᾶτο: "And she fastened itover her breastwith clasps of gold." "We gather from this passage," says Miss Abrahams, "that the garment was fastenedon the shouldersby brooches or pins inserted κατὰ στῆθος, which Studniczka rightly interprets as 'down towards the breast,' a method of fastening which is represented on the François vase and elsewhere." "The material," Miss Abrahams goes on, "is drawn from the back, and wraps over that which covers the front,the pins are then inserted downwards, and hold the two thicknesses of material together...."

But (see fig. 11) the pins are insertedupwards; we observe the long ribbed head of the pin, of known form like that of the 1450-1200 B.C. pins of Egypt and Enkomi, stuck into the fabric above the right breast. It penetrates the fabric, and passes upwards into a large oval shoulder piece, perhaps the tail of the piece of cloth which covers the decorated collar over the shoulder-joint. The Homeric phrase "pins inserteddown towardsthebreast" does not indicate this mode of fastening, which isupwards fromthe breast. "A method practically impossible—the pin would fall out," says Mr. Dawkins. "If so, blame the artist." Neither the "overfold" (ἀπόπτυγμα) nor the curious oval piece on the shoulder-joint (perhaps a portion of the fabric) is mentioned by Homer. Again, when we read,[15]"the dress is held into the figure by a girdle worn round the waist, over which any superfluous length of material could be drawn, forming a κόλπος or pouch," we must remember that in the dress on the François vasethere is no superfluous material. The dress ends just abovethe heels, there is no "tunic-trailing"; as in Homer. A woman who drew her dress up to form a κόλπος or pouch, would show much more of her legs than was fashionable in the archaic period, and would destroy the collant fit over the breast. The costume fits tightly to the bust; and in art of 600-550 B.C. this is the rule. We see no women "with deep κόλπος or pouch," whereas the nurse of Eumaeus could conceal three cups in her pouch. Here, again, Mr. Dawkins thinks that the limitations of the artist cause the absence of thekolpos. "He made any dress look tight, because he could only draw his idea of the body and then indicate dress on the body. The artist has two mental images, one of the natural body and the other of the dress, and he could only carry out his work by combining the two."

But I must reply that, in the François vase, we are far from the "primitive" artist. The artist knows very well what he is about. He draws short skirts and over the bust the dress iscollant, because that is the fashion. The painter no longer draws impossible waists, they are in good proportion for girls. Moreover, artists of the same period when they design a woman in a mantle do so in the modern way. The bust is indicated; the mantle does not cover it, but covers the waist, and no attempt is made to show what the artist knows is there: he does not design what is not in sight. Even an Australian black fellow drew what he saw, not what he knew was there, in sketches of white ladies.[16]We must not explain the François vase by the limitations of "primitive art."

Fig. 11.—The Fates on the François VaseFrom Miss Abraham'sGreek Dress

My impression is that in the eighth to seventh centuries women still did, at least occasionally, wear a costume consisting, as in Aegean times, of separate bodices and skirts. Thus in an archaic Corinthian gold jewel we see an Ariadne naked from the belt upwards, beneath is a skirt falling to the instep. Skirts were thereforeseparate, and imply a separate bodice, if the upper body is to be covered[17](fig. 12).

Fig. 12.—Ariadne, Theseus, and MinotaurFrom a Corinthian Gold Ornament

The pouch is Homeric, but in art of 600-550 B.C. no woman, as far as I have observed, has any "superfluous length of material," or, at least, almost none draws it up through the girdle to form such a pouch as we see on Miss Abrahams's fig. 10 (Metope from the temple of Zeus at Olympia). The wearer could hide the family plate in her pouch, not so the women of the Francois vase. Such a costume cannot be called, as a rule, τανυπέπλος, or ἑλκεσίπεπλος, "trailing robed," like Homer's women.

Thus the Greek dress of the seventh to sixth century, when many artists drew what they saw under no "primitive" limitations, is not Homeric. Homeric female dress is loose and flowing, and trailing. Archaic Greek female dress is tight, not flowing, not trailing. Historic Hellenic female dress is loose, flowing, and trailing; it returns to the Homeric type. In holding these opinions we are not, then, deluded by the freedom of Homer's art; he insists on thekolpos, or loose fold which makes a pouch, and on the trailing loose peplos; nor, at least in my opinion, are we deluded by the stiffness of archaic art, which really represents the brevity and tightness of the prevailing fashion.

Thus we cannot cite the François vase "in illustration of the Homeric peplos."[18]The François dress is not trailing, nor is it pouched, nor is it Homeric. A thick, round, embroidered collar with no apparent breach in its continuity is either pinned or sewn over the François peplos, and the overlap is tight enough to indicate the bust very gracefully. Moreover, the costume of Athene[19]is not that of the François vase (fig. 13).Both, I think, cannot be "the closed Doric dress." Athene has a garment much more flowing than that of the François dress; and, unlikethat costume, it has a pouch, though her dress falls rather lower than that of the François ladies; and she has no thick collar, and no long pins thrust up from the breast.[20]Athene's dress would be long and trailing, if it were not drawn up through the girdle. By the date of the Olympian figure of Athene, Greek female dress had moved back from the fashion of the François costume towards that which Homer knew and described.

We now reach the strange story which Herodotus tells to account for the alleged enforced change of Athenian women's costume from the peplos fastened with long stiletto-like pins, as in the François vase (an Athenian work of art), to the Ionic dress, which had no long pins. The women, he says, slew, with their long pins, a messenger who bore the tale of the massacre of their husbands; and the men therefore compelled them to wear the Ionian linen chiton, which does not require theπερόνη, the stiletto pin.[21]The event was of the first half of the sixth century; 568 B.C. is the date conjectured, which tallies fairly with Mr. Walters's dating of the François vase made while long pins were still fashionable. But if the wearing of Ionic costume were, as Miss Abrahams supposes, one of the luxuries which Solon (594 B.C.) tried to check, then we must date the François vase in the seventh century. Yet the costume of the vase, with its expensive embroideries, is much more "luxurious" than the linen Ionian chiton or smock. In any case it is certain, from the dangerous long pins of, say, 1200 B.C. at Enkomi and in Greek deposits in Egypt, that women wore these stiletto pins five centuries before they did so at Athens, in, say, 620-560 B.C. So Homer had his mind, when Aphroditescratched her hand with an Achaean woman's pin, on Achaean female dress, not on that of Athenians of the seventh or sixth century.

Fig. 13.—Historic GreekCostume From Leaf'sHomer's Iliadvol. ii

In short, Homeric female dress was not introduced into the Epics by any "recension," by any interpolators of any post-Achaean date, as Pinza argues that it was.[22]He supposes the Ionian female costume to be a long linen smock with short sleeves.

Pinza argues that the costume of women in Homer "is wholly different from that of Spartan ladies of archaic and classical times; and, on the other hand, exhibits many analogies with the more antique linen chiton with short sleeves, certainly of Asiatico-Semitic origin, as is proved by the etymology of the name" (chiton).[23]He supposes the Ionian costume of women, described as a long linen smock with short sleeves, to be derived, through Phoenicia, from the Syria of, say, 690 B.C., citing Hebrew female captives in Layard'sMonuments of Nineveh(i. plates 61, 83, and others). In plate 61 we see a tall female captive, wearing a long garment, with a broad fringe over her head, and below it another long garment with short tight sewn sleeves, and a broad border which falls over the legs, leaving them bare from the calf. There are no pins or fibulae visible; the upper garment hides the girdle, if girdle there be. In plate 65 two figures of goddesses are carried, on chairs, in a procession. They wear long sewn smocks, with sewn sleeves ending above the elbows, and with very broad belts. The dresses end above the ankle bones. They are far from being loose or trailing; no pins or fibulae appear. The same costume, without any girdle, is worn by two women in a kitchen: they seem to have bodices and skirts (plate 30). The sleeves have no small round brooches like the Ionian chiton, which, like the Assyrian dresses, reached the feet (ποδήρης).

Miss Abrahams remarks that it is a mistake to suppose the Doric chiton to have been always fastened by pins or brooches, the Ionic always sewn on the shoulders (like those quoted from Assyrian monuments). In many Greek works of art, a chiton, clearly Ionic, is not sewn on the shoulders, but fastened down the upper arm by a series of small brooches.[24]The Assyrian dresses often answer to the Ionic chiton as thus described, but arewithout any brooches; and they are much shorter than the Ionic chiton, which, as thus described, is always longer than the height of the wearer; "the superfluous length is drawn up through the girdle to form akolpos, which varies in depth according to the length of the chiton."[25]Not so in archaic Greek art! In any case, the Ionic dress as described is much longer than that of the Assyrian designs, has a kolpos, where they have none, and may either be sewn, like them, over the shoulder, or, unlike them, may be fastened over the upper arm with small brooches. Thus the Ionic,as described, is not the same as the Syrian, when the Ionic has brooches; nor is it, in my opinion the female costume of the Greek vases of the seventh and early sixth centuries.

In Layard's plate 67 A, from the Assyrian monuments, we see two of the captive women from Lachish kneeling and giving suck to their children. Their smocks are tight, girdled, and reach the heels. The dress of the upper woman has short sleeves on both arms, and the line where it crosses below the neck is perfectly well marked. How the infant, in these circumstances, reaches the natural source of nourishment is a deep mystery. In the figure of the lower woman certain faint lines appear to indicate that the dress has been opened at the centre of the neck and drawn aside over one breast. In neither case is there any trace of fibula, pin, button, or hook and eye, or loose hanging flap.

Pinza, however,[26]finds here an exact parallel to Hera's peplos inIliad, xiv. 175, "fastened over her breast with clasps of gold," that is, "fastened on the shoulders by brooches or pins inserted down towards the breast"; and this, again, is said to be illustrated (as above) by the François vase. In answer, it may suffice to look at the two pictures, Layard 67 A and the Fates on the François vase. A simple button and button-hole, as Pinza remarks, in the dress below the centre of the neck, would, if withdrawn, do all that these Hebrew babies need. A man may illustrate this for himself by opening his shirt at the collar stud. The lower Hebrew woman might even be naked above the belt, like the kneeling woman just beneath her, were it not for the line of her dress across her neck. She has no sleeves. There is no sign of any openings at the shoulders orprecisaménte come l' ἑανός della Epopea.

These Assyrian designs do not, it seems to me, encourage the opinion that Hebrew female costume of the date of Hezekiah, say, 690 B.C., was thrust into Homer about that period, at an Ionian "recension," and remained there unaltered by later "recensions."[27]The brooched costume of Homeric women is not the sewn costume of the Assyrian art. Other Hebrew ladies from Lachish wear the long piece of cloth over their heads, falling to the top of the ankle, and under that a tight smock of the same length. There is no girdle, the arms are bare, no fibulae are shown.[28]As the Syrian female costume never shows brooch, pin, or fibula, it certainly cannot be the origin of the Homeric or the Doric peplos, or of the brooched historical costume of Hellas.

Meanwhile a mere untutored man who looks at the Fates on the François vase thinks, I find, that the embroidered overlap is simply a short jacket worn overthe peplos, This appears to be an error. But I had, as an amateur, come to the conclusion that the dress of the women in archaic Greek art often consists of sewn bodice and skirt, or of a tight jacket with a separate skirt, not of the peplos. Mr. Myres had already expressed similar opinions as to the late survival (or revival?) of that Aegean costume.[29]

Moreover, Mr. Walters, judging from vase-paintings, says, "The Ionic costume is introduced about 500 B.C., but its vogue does not seem to have lasted long at Athens."[30]

Perdrizet thought that the archaic costume more resembled the Mycenaean (or Aegean) than the Doric style; while Mr. Wace (in the catalogue of the museum at Sparta), Mr. Leaf, Mr. Dawkins, and others hold that the archaic dress is merely a long chiton tied at the waist. This question of the late survival, or revival, of non-Homeric Aegean female costume is thus delicate and obscure, though I have little or no doubt that it did in many cases survive or was revived.

The woman in the archaic sepulchral monument from Etruria (British Museum) wears a short jacket, and a very brief skirt; and a woman in a leaden figurine of Sparta wears only a girdle and a kirtle. She is running, and has thrown off her jacket or bodice. An archaic Victory, a terra cotta in the British Museum, wears onlya very short skirt.[31]The Ariadne of an archaic Corinthian jewel, in a belted skirt, with no bodice, has already been cited.

Thus the evidence of art, in the dark period of, say, 900-700 B.C., inclines me to believe that women sometimes wore shaped and sewn bodices and skirts, or jackets and skirts; sometimes a strait brooched and girdled peplos, not flowing, not trailing, not Homeric; that there was none of the Homeric uniformity of attire. Varieties of fashion are not discordant with feminine nature.

[1]Studien zur Ilias, von Carl Robert, Berlin, 1901.

[2]The Menzies tartan is of white and pink checks, which the artist renders lovingly.

[3]Schliemann,Tiryns, plate xvii. Studniczka,Altgr. Tracht.

[4]Leaf,Iliad, vol. ii. p. 596.

[5]Iliad, v. 425, xiv. 180, xviii. 401.

[6]Leaf,Iliad, vol. ii. pp. 595-598.

[7]Ridgeway,Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 553-577.

[8]Tiryns, plate xvii.

[9]In northern Aragon.

[10]Scripta Minoa, vol. i. p. 282.

[11]B. S. A., vol. xiii. pp. no, 113.

[12]Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, vol. xxx., 1900, p. 203, fig. 2. Evans on "Mycenaean Cyprus."

[13]Walters,History of Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. p. 270.

[14]Iliad, xiv. 175et seqq.

[15]Greek Dress, p. 30.

[16]Mrs. Langloh Parker,Australian Legendary Tales.

[17]See fig. 2 in Roscher'sLexikon, ii. 2. 3007.

[18]Greek Dress, p. 44.

[19]Ibid., fig. 10.

[20]Here, it must be said, Mr. Dawkins dissents, not seeing any difference in the two costumes. I think that is because he supposes the François artist not to be able to draw what he sees; for the dresses seem, in fact, to me different.

[21]Herodotus, v. 87.

[22]Pinza,Hermes, 1909, p. 526.

[23]Ibid.pp. 527, 528.

[24]Greek Dress, p. 60.

[25]Greek Costume, p. 60.

[26]Pinza,Hermes, p. 538.

[27]Ibid. p. 526.

[28]Layard,Nineveh and Babylon, p. 152.

[29]Proceedings British School of Athens, vol. ix. p. 386, citing the difference of colour, and we may add of decorative design, on the part of the costume above, and the part below the girdle. This difference could not always occur in a dress all of one piece. For example, see the female figures incised on the fragments of a corslet of bronze plates at Olympia (Bronzen, plate lix.). But this question issub judice; it is argued that the difference of pattern and colour in upper and lower parts of the dress is a decorative caprice of the artist, and corresponds to nothing that he saw in women's costume. It is impossible to deny that Ariadne in the archaic Corinthian piece of gold-work has come to see the Minotaur killed, wearing her skirt, and leaving her bodice in her bedroom (Roscher'sLexikon, ii. 2. 3007, fig. 2).

[30]History of Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. p. 200.

[31]Cf.B.S.A., vol. xii. p. 323, fig. K.

The Aegean civilisation, till its last age of decadence in art, knew nothing about the use of iron for weapons or tools: at least no such relics have been discovered. Homer, on the other hand, is thoroughly familiar with iron as a commodity. A recurrent formula describes wealthy men as rich in gold, bronze, women, and iron.[1]

Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides were bartered for wine, at the siege of Troy, when a large trading fleet came in from Lemnos, sent by Euneos, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, a princess of that island.[2]Lemnos seems to have been rich in wine, which provoked the heroes to uttergabes(as in theChansons de Geste) about their future triumphs in the war.[3]

Thus iron is abundant, but its uses are strangely restricted. All careful readers must perceive that Homer lives in an age of "overlap." Remains of such ages are common on European sites almost everywhere; the explorer finds in the overlap iron and bronze things together, iron comes gradually in: bronze, for weapons and tools, gradually disappears.

Thus at the great prehistoric cemetery of Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps, we find weapons of bronze fitted with iron edges, then swords with iron blades and hilts of bronze, then swords of iron, hilt and blade.[4]

In Crete was found atholostomb (a domed stone edifice) with a bronze spear-head, a set of iron tools including a double pick and an axe, and a sword of iron. This tomb was of the period when "geometric" ornament on vases had nearly supplanted the Aegean forms of decoration: in fact it was in the period to which we may assign Homer.[5]Other tholos tombs near the same site contained vessels Aegean inshape, with geometricornament, and an iron dagger, and bronze fibulae and bracelets, objects for which iron was not used. In a tomb at Muliana in Crete,[6]were found bronze weapons with human remains that had been buried beside iron weapons with cremated bones.[7]The vases were partly of Aegean, partly of Dipylon geometric style.

Now Homer describes this period of gradual overlap of iron and bronze. But he adds the strange peculiarity that the weapons, but for a single arrow-head[8]and an iron mace, mentioned as the peculiar fancy of a warrior when Nestor was young,[9]are always of bronze, while the tools and the masses of metal out of which they are forged are usually of iron. This fact has often been the subject of comment.[10]Of the critics mentioned in the note below, Helbig and Cauer think that the steady mention by Homer of bronze for weapons is a mere tradition of the epic, maintained by poets in the Iron Age. It would be interesting to find any such tradition in any other literature of the early Iron Age. But we do not find it. Moreover, the lays of the Bronze Age, when they mentioned tools, must have said that they were of bronze, as Homer occasionally does; but we are not toldwhy later poets maintained the bronze tradition for weapons, but spoke of tools as iron. As in the case of the arrow-head it is called "the iron," so in the case of tools, and of knives (not used in battle); the wheelwright is said to fell a tree "with the iron," though Odysseus trims the wood of his bed "with the bronze." Achilles, it is feared, will cut his own throat "with the iron" (knife); the cattle struggle when slain "with the iron"—the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron," through the holes in the axes. But no man, in battle, strikes with or dies under "the iron." This distinction could not have been uniformly maintained throughout several centuries by poets living in an age of iron weapons.

Naber and Bérard, unlike Cauer and Helbig, give the obvious explanation that when iron came in, but its manufacture and the sharpening of it were ill understood, men would make heavy axes and other rural implements of iron, but would not trust their lives to iron weapons which were brittle or which "doubled up." This is the view which occurred to myself before I had read the works of Naber and Bérard; but I then knew no proof that a stage of iron tools and bronze weapons had ever existed.

As Monsieur Bérard puts the case, "I might almost say that iron is the popular metal ... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town."[11]It is probable that the princes who had lands remote from towns kept each his own smithy for rough work, like Highland chiefs in 1680-1745, who had the rough iron work done on the estate, but always imported their swordbladesfrom the Continent. The hilts were made at home, basket hilts.[12]

Knives, never said to be used in war, agricultural and pastoral implements, and axes, though occasionally of bronze, are usually of iron in the Epics.[13]No graves opened in Greek soil have as yet yielded iron tools accompanied by bronze weapons alone. Mr. Arthur Evans, however, who accepts the view that Homer describes an actual period of bronze for weapons, iron for tools, writes, "This corresponds with a distinct phase of archaeological evidence. Thus in the Cypro-Minoan tomb at Enkomi the weapons were of bronze, but small iron knives also occurred (Murray,Excavations in Cyprus, p. 25)."[14]The Homeric state of affairs is illustrated by Mr. MacAllister's diggings in a certain stratum of the ancient city of Gezer in Palestine.All weaponsare of bronze,all implementsare of iron. Gezer was in touch with Aegean art; a bronze sword-blade of the Cnossian "horned" type (the hilt turning up like two horns) was found there.[15]Gaza also had "her Minoan traditions and the cult of the Cretan Zeus." Jewellery of late Aegean taste has been found at Gezer; and the Philistines are suspected of being settlers from Crete, whether Aegean or Achaean.

In the present state of knowledge we can say safely that Homer, with his bronze weapons and iron tools, has not invented a state of culture that never existed. The relative uses of excellent bronze for spears and swords, and of dubious iron for implements, were perfectly natural. Homer probably saw this stage in actual life; nobody could invent it; but no Homeric cairn with buried weapons and tools has ever been discovered,and if any had been found, they would long ago have been plundered.

There are two lines, or rather one line is twice repeated in theOdyssey, which give thedémentito the uniform descriptions in both Epics. Odysseus bids Telemachus hide the weapons in the hall, and, if asked why he does it, reply that the Wooers in their cups may quarrel, and use the arms, and "shame the feast, and this wooing, for iron of himself draws a man to him."[16]This is a proverbial expression of the age when iron is, at least, the dominant if not the only metal for weapons. If, then, this line be as old as the rest of theOdyssey, in which weapons are always of bronze, its maker has let out that all the other makers have been saying what they do not mean; and in an age of iron, or overlap of bronze-and iron, have consistently maintained that all weapons are of bronze, while tools are of iron, as a rule.

Helbig and others[17]think the line a very late intrusion; it may be removed without altering the sense of the passage. Mr. Monro, onOdyssey, xix. 1-50, discusses the question fully. "Ancient and modern critics," he says, "are generally agreed that the first mention of 'iron' as synonymous with 'weapon'" (Od. xvi. 294), and the rest of the passage, "is an interpolation founded on xix. 1-50, and intended to lead up to it." But Kirchoff (Odyssey, p. 560) reverses the process, the second appearance of the passage is the earlier. Mr. Monro argues thatbothpassages "are additions to the original context."

It is essential to the whole story that the Wooers, who, of course, wear swords, as was universally done in time of peace, should, when attacked by arrows, need shields and spears to throw. The interpolator, if interpolator there were, thought that, in ordinary circumstances, shields and spears would be hanging on thewalls of the hall, as in the Ionian house of Alcaeus (Fragm. 15, Bergk.).

We do not know from other descriptions of Homeric halls that this was the custom in Homer's age; it is nowhere mentioned.

The war-gear in the palace of Cnossus was certainly stored apart in special chambers. Suppose, then, that a late poet, accustomed to see war-gear arranged on walls, had the opportunity to introduce the practice into theOdyssey, he would inevitably cause confusion; and the passage does cause great confusion, as Mr. Monro proves in his long note.

(1) The moment foreseen and prepared for by Odysseus never arrives, and that is quite contrary to "the Epic manner."

(2) It is a weaker argument, that the speech about arms tempting men to use them disregards the fact that the Wooers wear swords; what they need under the rain of arrows is shields and throwing spears. For these they send the Goatherd to the store-chamber, where, in fact, they were probably kept in a Homeric house, not, as in the case of Alcaeus, on the walls.

(3) The use of "iron" for "weapon" is, as Mr. Monro says, an anachronism.

(4) The vocabulary "has a post-Homeric stamp." Of this I am no judge; but I point out later what Mr. Monro omits to notice, that in the first passage, xvi. 296, the δοιὰ βοάγρια χερσιν ἑλέσθαι is archaeologically utterly un-Homeric (cf. p. 103); while the command to bring two βοάγρια and spears, as Mr. Monro says, is not repeated nor carried out in the second passage; again contrary to the manner of the Epic.

(5) InOdyssey, xxii. 23-25, when Odysseus has shot Antinous, the Wooers look at the wall to find spears vainly; but why? They do not expect a fight, they think (xxii. 31, 32) that Odysseus, aiming at some other mark, has shot Antinous byaccident. In xxii.5-7 he has said, enigmatically, that he will try, with Apollo's aid, to hit a mark that no man has struck before. The words about their looking to the walls for weapons "are an interpolation, and prove nothing about the removal of the arms."

(6) Mr. Monro renders the speech of Melanthius (xxii. 139-141) in this manner: "Go to, I will bring you gear to arm you from the store-chamber, for the arms are in their place (ἔνδον), I think, and Odysseus and his sons have not put them elsewhere." Melanthius merely means that the armour has not been moved by Odysseus and Telemachus from its natural place, the store-chamber; he will there find what is needed.

(7) The passage in Book xxiv. 164-166, where the ghost of Amphimedon tells the story of the removal of the arms to Agamemnon in Hades, is late, like all Book xxiv. It is possibly later than the passage about removing the arms from the hall.

Averse as I am to theories of interpolation, the whole passage in which "iron" is made a synonym for "weapon" is rich in the non-Epic manner as well as matter, and causes very un-Homeric confusions. Critics of all shades of opinion recognise this, and I do not object to the line about iron merely because it is as fatal to my theory as it is friendly to that of Mr. Ridgeway.[18]

In this case the line contradicts the whole of both Epics, which in itself provokes suspicion; just as a single passage in which cavalry were introduced, or burials by humation were introduced, or armorial bearings on small bucklers appeared, would rightly be deemed a late interpolation.

This line apart, the two Epics seem uniform work of a peculiar stage, the Gezer stage, of the overlap of bronze and iron.

Hesiod knew all about the Bronze Age, and knew that his was the age of iron, whereas the ancients tooled with bronze, "and there was no black iron." Put Hesiod at 700 B.C., and we wonder why "late poets" about that date gave iron tools but bronze weapons to the Achaeans.[19]

The line in theOdysseyis found, one must add, in most suspicious circumstances, and in the worst of company. It first appears inOdyssey, xvi. 294, when Odysseus, at the house of Eumaeus, is prophesying to Telemachus about the misbehaviour of the Wooers. He bids his son, at his nod, to conceal the arms and the weapons in the hall, and if asked why he has done so, reply that they afford occasion for brawls, as "iron draws a man to him." The passage goes on, "but for us alone leave two swords, two spears, and two shields to grasp with our hands" Here the word for shields is βοάγρια, which occurs in no other line of Iliad or Odyssey except Iliad, xii. 22; while the following line (23), mentioning "demigods," "takes us at once away from the Homeric world, and opens an entirely new order of conceptions."[20]"The most careless critics," says Mr. Leaf, cannot pass this passage in theIliad, nor can the most conservative critic defend it. As the dubious passage of theOdysseyconcerning iron contains the same non-Homeric word for shields as the indubitably false passage of theIliad, and as the poet of theOdysseyexpects the shields to be held in the hand (an die Arme zu nehmen, Faesi) while Homer's shields are always suspended by baldrics, it is clear that the Odyssean passage with the mention of iron as synonymous with weapon is rather more thansuspect.

The line recurs[21]in changed circumstances when Telemachus and Odysseus together remove the weapons, but do not leave two swords, two spears, and two shields (βοάγρια) for themselves. Everything falls out otherwisethan Odysseus had practically prophesied in Book xvi., when we come to the slaying of the Wooers in Book xxii.

This would mean nothing in a modern novel; but, as Mr. Monro says, in Homer it is singular; it would be more in his manner to let events exactly fulfil the boding of Odysseus. I have proved that the whole passage not only contradicts the uniform tenor of the two Epics as to bronze weapons, but causes hopeless confusion, has the most suspicious associations, and contravenes the Homeric practice of suspending shields by baldrics. Even if we excised the line concerning iron, which can be omitted without injuring the sense, the whole passage in both of its appearances is decidedly suspicious.[22]

Back to Index Next