THE METALS IN HOMER.
THE undivided Aryans knew very little of the underground riches of the
earth. They transmitted to their dispersed descendants no common words
for mining, forging, or smelting, none to indicate a metal in general,
and only one designative of a metal in particular. This took in Sanskrit
the form _ayas_, in Latin, _æs_; it is represented by the German _Erz_,
equivalent to the English _ore_; and, after drifting through a Celtic
channel, took a new meaning and form as _Eisen_, or _iron_.[310] The
original signification of the term was _copper_; and copper seems, in
general, to have been the first metal to engage the attention of
primitive man. This is easily accounted for. Copper is widely
distributed; it frequently occurs in the native state, when its strong
colour at once catches the eye; it is easily worked, and displays a
luminous glow highly engaging to an unsophisticated taste for ornament.
And, because copper was at first the only substance of the kind known,
its name was used to determine those of other related substances. Thus,
in Sanskrit, iron was called ‘dark blue _ayas_,’ _ayas_ having come to
mean metal in general; and a specific sign (possibly that for
_hardness_) added, in the Egyptian inscriptions, to the hieroglyph for
copper, causes it to denote iron.[311] But in South Africa these
positions are exchanged. There iron ranks as the fundamental metal; gold
being known to at least one Kafir tribe as ‘yellow,’ silver as ‘white,’
copper as ‘red’ iron.[312] And to these linguistic facts corresponds the
exceptional circumstance, due probably to early intercourse with Egypt,
that the stone-age in South Africa yielded immediately to an iron-age.
Footnote 310:
Much, _Die Kupferzeit in Europa_, p. 173; Schrader and Jevons,
_Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryans_, p. 188; Taylor, _Origin of
the Aryans_, p. 138.
Footnote 311:
Lepsius, _Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes_, p. 55.
Footnote 312:
Schrader and Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 154; Rougemont, _L’Âge de Bronze_,
p. 14.
In Asia, gold was discovered next after copper, the Massagetæ, described
by Herodotus, exemplifying this stage of progress; silver, or ‘white
gold’ succeeded, bringing lead in its train; then, little by little, tin
crept into use; while iron, destined to predominate, came last. All the
six, however, are enumerated in a Khorsabad inscription;[313] they were
familiar to the ancient Egyptians, to the Israelites of the Exodus, and
to the Homeric Greeks.
Footnote 313:
Lenormant, _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, vol. vi. p. 345.
Gold was with Homer supreme among terrestrial substances. It represented
to him beauty, splendour, power, wealth, incorruption. It was the metal
of the gods, and mortals by its profuse employment, borrowed something
of divine glory. Its availability for them had, nevertheless, narrow
limitations unfelt supernally. For the visionary metal of Olympus might
be dispensed at will without restrictions either as to quantity or
qualities. Inexhaustible stores of it lay at command; and it could be
rendered infrangible and impenetrable by some mythical process unknown
to sublunary metallurgists. Hence the golden hobbles with which Poseidon
secured his coursers might have proved less satisfactory for the
restraint of commonplace Thracian or Thessalian horses; the golden sword
of Apollo would surely have bent in the hand of Hector; the golden
mansion of the sea-god built for aye in the blue depths of the Ægean,
could not have supported its own weight for an hour on realistic dry
land; nor would the process of lifting earth to heaven by hauling on a
rope have been facilitated by making that rope (as Zeus proposed to do
for the purpose in question) of gold. Of gold, too, were the garments of
the gods, their thrones, utensils, implements, appurtenances; the
pavement of their courts was ‘trodden gold’; golden were the wings of
Iris, golden was the beauty of Aphrodite. No doubt, all these
attributions were half consciously metaphorical, but their main design
was to set off immortal existence by decorating it with an enhanced
degree of the same kind of magnificence marking the dignity of mortal
potentates.
It is remarkable that the Olympian gold in the Shield of Achilles
retained some part of the occult virtue properly belonging to it only in
that elevated sphere. Of the five metallic layers composing the great
buckler, the middle and most precious one gets the whole credit of
having arrested the quivering spears of Æneas and Asteropæus.[314] The
verses, to be sure, recording its superior efficacy are held to be
spurious, and the inclusion of a hidden stratum of gold does indeed seem
without reason, as it is certainly without precedent. Yet the original
poet would not have altogether disavowed the inspiring idea of the
passage; and the alleged impenetrability of the gold-mail of
Masistius[315] may be held to imply that traces of its old mystical
faculty of resistance lingered about the metal so late as when Xerxes
invaded Greece.
Footnote 314:
_Iliad_, xx. 268; xxi. 165; and Leaf’s annotations.
Footnote 315:
Herodotus, ix. 22.
The metallic treasures allotted to the gods in the Iliad are confiscated
for human enrichment in the Odyssey. For the golden automata of
Hephæstus are substituted the golden watch-dogs and torch-bearers of
Alcinous; resplendent dwellings are erected, no longer on Olympus or at
Ægæ, but in Sparta and Phæacia; Helen shares with Artemis in the Odyssey
the golden distaff exclusively attributed to the latter in the Iliad;
the ‘dreams of avarice,’ in short, are tangibly realised, in the Epic of
adventure, only by human possessions; they shrink for the most part into
shadowy epithets where divine surroundings are concerned. Nor is this
diversity accidental or unmeaning. It indicates a genuine shifting of
the mythological point of view—an advance, slight yet significant,
towards a more spiritualised conception of deity.
Oriental contact first stirred the _auri sacra fames_ in the Greek mind.
That this was so the Greek language itself tells plainly. For _chrusos_,
gold, is a Semitic loanword, closely related to the Hebrew _chârûz_, but
taken immediately, there can be no reasonable doubt, from the Phœnician.
The restless treasure-seekers from Tyre were, indeed, as the
Græco-Semitic term _metal_ intimates,[316] the original subterranean
explorers of the Balkan peninsula. As early, probably, as the fifteenth
century B.C. they ‘digged out ribs of gold’ on the islands of Thasos and
Siphnos, and on the Thracian mainland at Mount Pangæum; and the fables
of the Golden Fleece, and of Arimaspian wars with gold-guarding
griffins, prove the hold won by the ‘precious bane’ over the popular
imagination. Asia Minor was, however, the chief source of prehistoric
supply, the native mines lying long neglected after the Phœnicians had
been driven from the scene. Midas was a typical king in a land where the
mountains were gold-granulated, and the rivers ran over sands of gold.
And it was in fact from Phrygia that Pelops was traditionally reported
to have brought the treasures which made Mycenæ the golden city of the
Achæan world.
Footnote 316:
Schrader and Jevons, _Antiquities of the Aryans_, p. 155; Much, _Die
Kupferzeit in Europa_, p. 147.
The Epic affluence in gold was not wholly fictitious. From the
sepulchres of Mycenæ alone about one hundred pounds Troy weight of the
metal have been disinterred; freely at command even in the lowest
stratum of the successive habitations at Hissarlik, it was lavishly
stored, and highly wrought in the picturesquely-named ‘treasure of
Priam;’ and has been found, in plates and pearls, beneath twenty metres
of volcanic debris, in the Cycladic islands Thera and Therapia.[317]
This plentifulness contrasts strangely with the extreme scarcity of gold
in historic Greece. It persisted, however, mainly owing to the vicinity
of the auriferous Ural Mountains, in the Milesian colony of Panticapæum,
near Kertch, where graves have been opened containing corpses shining
‘like images’ in a complete clothing of gold-leaf, and equipped with
ample supplies of golden vessels and ornaments.
Footnote 317:
Much, _Die Kupferzeit_, p. 41.
Silver[318] was, at the outset, a still rarer substance than gold. Not
that there is really less of it. The ocean alone is estimated to contain
nearly ten thousand million tons, and the mines yielding it, though few,
are rich. But it occurs less obviously, and is less easy to obtain pure.
Accordingly, in some very early Egyptian inscriptions, silver, by
heading the list of metals, claims a supremacy over them which proved
short-lived. It terminated for ever with the scarcity that had produced
it, when the Phœnicians began to pour the flood of Spanish silver into
the markets and treasure-chambers of the East. Armenia constituted
another tolerably copious source of supply; and it was in this quarter
that Homer located the ‘birthplace of silver.’[319] Alybé, on the coast
of the Euxine east of Paphlagonia, whence the Halizonians came to Troy,
was identified by Strabo with Chalybe, a famous mining district.[320]
The people there, indeed, as Xenophon recorded, lived mostly by digging
iron; and their name was preserved in the Greek _chalups_, steel, and
survives with ourselves in _chalybeate_ waters. The district has,
however, in modern times, again become known as argentiferous. The
Homeric tradition receives countenance from the discovery, in the
neighbourhood of Tripoli, of antique, half obliterated silver-workings;
and from the existence, not far off, of a ‘Silver-town’ (Gunnish-kana),
and a ‘Silver-mountain’ (Gunnish-dagh), whence a large tribute in silver
still flowed, a few years ago, into the leaky coffers of Turkey.[321]
Footnote 318:
Blümner, _Technologie der Gewerbe_, Bd. iv. pp. 28-32.
Footnote 319:
_Iliad_, ii. 857.
Footnote 320:
_Geog._ xii. 3.
Footnote 321:
Rougemont, _L’Âge de Bronze_, p. 169; Riedenauer, _Handwerk und
Handwerker_, p. 101.
The word _silver_ (Gothic, _silubr_) has even been conjecturally
associated with the Homeric Alybé;[322] while other philologists prefer
to regard it as equivalent to the Assyrian _sarpu_.[323] All that is
certain is the absence of a general Aryan name for the metal, showing
that the Aryans collectively made no acquaintance with it. Thus, the
Greek _arguros_ and the Latin _argentum_, although closely related, are
really different words. That is to say, they were formed independently
from the common root, _ark_, to shine, modified into _arg_, white. Its
whiteness, in fact, has supplied the designations of this metal in all
parts of the world. Silver is the ‘white iron’ of the Kaffirs, the
‘white gold’ of the Afghans, the ‘white copper’ of the Vedic Indians;
and the antique Accadians and Egyptians defined it by the same obvious
quality.[324] The Greek _arguros_ is, then, a comparatively late word,
formed, perhaps, after the Achæan tribes were already settled in their
Hellenic home, when their first supplies of silver began to come in from
Pontic Asia Minor.
Footnote 322:
Hehn, _Wanderings of Plants_, p. 443.
Footnote 323:
Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, p. 143.
Footnote 324:
Schrader and Jevons, _Antiquities of the Aryans_, pp. 154, 180-82.
The subsequence of its invention to the adoption into the Greek language
of _chrusos_, gold, can be inferred from the relative paucity of proper
and placenames compounded with it. Homer has only four such, while his
‘golden’ appellations number thirteen. Take as specimens the series
Chryse, Chryses, and Chryseïs, designating a place in the Troad, the
priest of Apollo in that place, and his daughter, all memorably
connected with the tragic Wrath of Achilles. The nomenclature, no doubt,
took its rise from solar associations; yet the typical relationship
between gold and the sun, silver and the moon, is nowhere in the Epics
directly recognised. Helios is never decorated with the epithet
‘golden’; Apollo, if he wears a golden sword, is more strongly
characterised by his silver bow. Lunar mythology is ignored; nor is the
ready metaphor of the ‘silver moon’ to be found in Homeric verse. The
‘apparent queen’ of the nocturnal sky does not there, as elsewhere in
poetry and folk-lore, ‘throw her silver mantle o’er the dark.’ The
metallic sheen, on the other hand, of water rippling in sunshine,
produces its due effect in the generation of epithets; rivers being
habitually called ‘silver-eddying,’ and Thetis, the Undine of the Iliad,
wearing a specific badge as ‘silver-footed.’
For the concrete purposes of actual decoration, the metal was in
constant Homeric demand. Heré’s chariot and the car of Rhesus shone with
its delicate radiance; the chair of Penelope was spirally inwrought with
silver and ivory; the greaves of Paris were silver clasped, and the
sheath of his sword silver-studded; a silver hilt adorned the weapon of
Achilles, and the strings of his lyre were attached to a silver
yoke.[325] Of silver, too, was the tool-chest of Hephæstus; the guests
of Circe ate off silver tables; the guests of Menelaus, if particularly
favoured, might have bathed in silver tubs, two of which were presented
to him in Egypt; and from golden ewers water was poured into silver
basins for the ablutions before meals in every establishment of some
pretension. The fittings shared the splendours of the furniture in
Odyssean palaces. In the great hall of Alcinous, the door-posts and
lintel were of silver, and golden and silver hounds, fashioned by
Hephæstus, kept watch beside its golden gates. And the courts of
Menelaus were resplendent with gold, bronze, silver, and electrum.
Footnote 325:
_Iliad_, i. 219; ix. 187; Buchholz, _Homerische Realien_, Bd. i. Abth.
ii. p. 316.
The term ‘electrum,’ however, is a somewhat ambiguous one. In classical
Greek, it denotes two perfectly distinct substances, one metallic, the
other of organic origin—the latter, indeed, chiefly; the word came to be
applied almost exclusively to _amber_. Or it may be that two primarily
distinct words coalesced with time into one. Lepsius has urged the
probability that the name of the metal was of the masculine form
_elektros_, while amber was designated by the neuter _elektron_.[326]
Nor is it unlikely that these words had separate genealogies, the first
being derived from an Aryan root signifying ‘to shine,’ the second from
a Semitic name for resin. Phœnician inscriptions may eventually throw
light upon a point which must otherwise remain unsettled, by acquainting
us with the Phœnician mode of designating amber.
Footnote 326:
_Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes_, p. 60.
The metallic electrum was an alloy of gold with about twenty per cent.
of silver. It occurs naturally, but was produced artificially as well,
especially in Egypt, where _asem_, as it was called, came into favour
long before any of the pyramids were built. It was in the Nile valley
thought fit for goddesses’ wear, its pale radiance suggesting feminine
refinement; and stores of it were laid up in the treasures of all the
early kings. The first Lydian coinage was of electrum; many of the
utensils and ornaments discovered at Hissarlik and Mycenæ prove to be
similarly composed; and electrum continued in favour down to a
particularly late date in the Græco-Scythic settlements on the Black
Sea. It made one of its few historical appearances in the ‘white gold’
offered by Crœsus at Delphi;[327] and there are two instances of its
epical employment. The ground of the Hesiodic Shield of Hercules was
inlaid, the walls of the banqueting-hall of Menelaus were overlaid, with
gold, electrum, and ivory. Although, in two other passages of the
Odyssey, the same word undoubtedly designates amber, it is safe to
affirm that here, where mural incrustations are in question, a metallic
substance, none other than the immemorial _asem_ of Egypt, should be
understood. Egyptian analogies, as Lepsius many years ago pointed out,
strongly support this supposition, above all where Egyptian associations
are so marked as in the Odyssean description of the Spartan court.
Electrum is unknown in the Iliad. The word occurs only in the form
_elektor_, signifying ‘the beaming sun.’
Footnote 327:
Herodotus, i. 50.
The third Homeric metal, and the most important of all, is _chalkos_.
But what does _chalkos_ mean? Copper or bronze? The question is not one
to be answered off-hand or categorically. It has been long and learnedly
debated; and admits, perhaps, of no decision more absolute than the
cautious arbitrament of Sir Roger de Coverley.
No help towards clearing up the point in dispute has been derived from
etymological inquiries. The word _chalkos_ is without Aryan equivalents,
and can best be explained by means of the Semitic _hhalaq_, signifying
‘metal worked with a hammer.’[328] Its primitive meaning, thus left
conjectural, was most probably ‘copper.’ For, from all parts of Europe,
evidence has gradually accumulated that the transition from the use of
stone to the use of bronze was through a ‘copper age,’ which, though
perhaps of short duration, has left relics impossible to be ignored.
Indications are even forthcoming among the prehistoric ‘finds’ at
Hissarlik, of the tentative processes by which copper was improved into
bronze.[329] The lower strata of ruins on the site of ancient Troy
contained articles and implements of approximately pure copper; nearer
the surface, a sensible ingredient of tin was added, augmented, here and
there, to the normal proportion for bronze of about twelve per cent. At
Mycenæ, domestic vessels were fabricated of copper, weapons and
ornamental objects of bronze; and a copper saw, dug from beneath the
lavas of Santorin, gives corroborative evidence of the early Greek use
of the unalloyed metal.
Footnote 328:
Lenormant, _Antiquités de la Troade_, p. 11.
Footnote 329:
_Ib._ p. 10.
_Chalkos_, then, must, to begin with, have denoted copper, and indeed it
partially preserves that sense in the Homeric poems. The cargo, for
example, taken on board at Temesé, in Cyprus, by the Taphian king
Mentes,[330] must have been of pure copper, the distinctively ‘Cyprian’
metal. The port of Temesé, afterwards Tamassos, be it observed, was a
Phœnician establishment, and bore a Phœnician name denoting
‘smelting-house,’ both instructive circumstances as regards the agency
by which metallic supplies were transmitted westward.[331] Again, when
Achilles enumerated with gold and ‘grey iron,’ red _chalkos_ as forming
part of his wealth,[332] he could have meant nothing but unadulterated
copper. The colour-adjective does not recur, but its employment this
once strongly supports the inference that the unwrought _chalkos_,
frequently spoken of as stored for future use or barter, was without
sensible admixture of tin.
Footnote 330:
_Odyssey_, i. 184.
Footnote 331:
Schrader and Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 196; Buchholz, _Homer. Real._ Bd.
i. Abth. ii. p. 326.
Footnote 332:
_Iliad_, ix. 365.
This inference, however, cannot reasonably be carried further. Homeric
armour was altogether of _chalkos_, and it would be absurd to suppose
that the ‘well-greaved Greeks’ went into action copper-clad. This on two
grounds. In the first place, archæological research has proved to
demonstration that bronze was fully and freely available in the late
Mycenæan age, when Homer, there is good reason to believe, flourished.
Articles composed of it must have been continually before his eyes and
within his grasp. Unless he deliberately elected, which is
inconceivable, to exclude from his poems all mention of a material of
primary importance to the known arts, his _chalkos_ was a term
sufficiently comprehensive to embrace _both_ bronze and copper. In the
second place, pure copper could not have played the part assigned to it.
Its inadequacy as a material for weapons or armour should promptly have
led to its rejection. Assuredly it could neither have sustained, nor
been the means of inflicting, the heavy blows and buffets exchanged by
the heroes of the Trojan War. The mere fact of the shattering of
Menelaus’s sword against the helmet of Paris[333] is conclusive as to
its having been made of a less yielding substance than copper;[334] and
the hardening process, by sudden cooling, imagined with the view to
removing the difficulty, has been pronounced, on the authority of
experts, impracticable.[335] The rigidity and occasional brittleness of
the Homeric _chalkos_ was imparted to it, we may be quite sure, by the
tin mixed with it.
Footnote 333:
_Iliad_, iii. 363.
Footnote 334:
Riedenauer, _Handwerk und Handwerker_, p. 103.
Footnote 335:
Blümner, _Technologie_, Bd. iv. p. 51.
Moreover, it is incredible that the Homeric Greeks, although acquainted
with iron, had no share in the bronze-culture flourishing, then and
previously, along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The
persistence, anywhere in that region, of so late, and so extraordinarily
developed a copper age, would indeed be a glaring anomaly. Already,[336]
in the third millennium B.C., bronze tools were used in Egypt; and under
the name _zabar_, whence the Arabic _zifr_, bronze was fabricated by
Sumero-Accadian metallurgists at the very outset of Mesopotamian
civilisation.[337] It was, in fact, probably from Mesopotamia that
knowledge of the art and its attendant advantages was carried westward
by Sidonian traffickers. Customers, then, who, like the Achæans,
procured from them plentiful supplies of copper, and a smaller quantity
of tin, could not long have remained ignorant of the vast superiority of
their alloyed over their separate condition. The conclusion is
inevitable that _chalkos_, like the corresponding Hebrew term
_nechosheth_, and the Egyptian _chomt_, was a word of some elasticity of
meaning, designating ordinarily bronze, but occasionally copper. The
translation, it need hardly be said, of any of the three by the English
_brass_ involves a gross error. Copper was not systematically alloyed
with zinc until about the second century B.C.[338]
Footnote 336:
Perrot et Chipiez, _Histoire de l’Art_, t. i. p. 829; Beck (_Gesch.
des Eisens_, p. 79) considers, however, that no Egyptian bronzes yet
analysed go back beyond the eighteenth dynasty, about 1700 B.C.
Footnote 337:
Lenormant, _Trans. Soc. Bibl, Archæology_, vol. vi. p. 344.
Footnote 338:
Blümner, _Technologie_, Bd. iv. p. 199.
But the bronze industry of old must have been seriously hampered in its
growth and spread by the scarcity of tin. This metal is of most
restricted distribution. The reservoirs of it held by the earth are few
and far apart. The two principal, in Cornwall and the Malaccan peninsula
respectively, are ‘wide as the poles asunder.’ Yet its discovery goes
back to a hoar antiquity, and its prehistoric use was extensive and
continuous. This wide dispersion of so scarce an article gives cogent
proof of unexpectedly early intercourse between remote populations, and
strikingly illustrates the effectiveness of those gradual processes of
primitive trade by which desirable commodities permeated continents, and
reached the least accessible markets.
The earliest historical source of tin was in the Cassiterides, or
‘tin-islands’ of Britain; and there can be no doubt, geographical
mystifications notwithstanding, that the tin thence derived came,
directly or indirectly, from Cornwall. Not improbably, the staple of the
Phœnician tin-trade was in the Isle of Wight, which accordingly became
the representative tin-island.[339] But this is questionable. What is
certain is, that the metal was transported overland to the Gulf of Lyons
long before the Phœnicians passed the Pillars of Hercules, and was
available, much earlier still, in Egypt and Assyria. The Cornish was
not, then, the first source of supply to be opened, nor was the
Malaccan. Tin was, in fact, an article of export from Alexandria to
India down to the beginning of the Christian era. The modern discovery,
however, of tin-mines in Khorassan, the ancient Drangiana, irresistibly
suggests that the primitive bronze-workers derived the less plentiful
material of their industry from the Paropamisus, and tends to confirm
the Turanian lineage imputed to them by Lenormant.[340]
Footnote 339:
Blümner, _Technologie_, Bd. iv. p. 86.
Footnote 340:
Von Baer, _Archiv für Anthropologie_, Bd. ix. p. 266; Blümner,
_Technologie_, Bd. iv. p. 84.
The Homeric name for tin, _kassiteros_, is at any rate clearly of
Oriental origin. The Greeks adopted it from the Phœnicians; the
Phœnicians _may_, it is thought, have picked it up from Accadian
bronze-smiths along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It survives in the
Arabic _kasdîr_, and under the form _kastîra_ made its way into
Sanskrit, on the occasion of Alexander’s invasion of the Punjâb. Pure
tin ranked with Homer almost as a precious metal. Its scarcity gave it
prestige; but he had evidently very little acquaintance with its
qualities. As Helbig remarks,[341] difficulties of interpretation arise
wherever _kassiteros_ is brought on the scene. A good deal of critical
discomfort, for instance, has been created by the statement that greaves
of tin were included in the warlike outfit supplied to Achilles from
Olympus. And bewilderment is heightened later on by the defensive power
they are made to exhibit in the hardest trials of actual battle. In
point of fact, they would have been as ineffective as papier-maché
against the thrust of Agenor’s spear; and their clattering would
scarcely have produced the awe-inspiring effect ascribed to it in the
following passage.
Footnote 341:
_Das Homerische Epos_, p. 285.
He [Agenor] said, and hurled his sharp spear with weighty hand,
and smote him [Achilles] on the leg beneath the knee, nor missed
his mark, and the greave of new-wrought tin rang terribly on
him; but the bronze bounded back from him it smote, nor pierced
him, for the god’s gift drave it back.[342]
Footnote 342:
_Iliad_, xxi. 591-94; cf. Blümner, _Technologie_, Bd. iv. p. 53.
Elsewhere in the Iliad, tin is employed ornamentally, as it was on the
pottery of the ancient pile-dwellers of Savoy.[343] But the poet is much
more sparing of it than he is of either gold or silver. Even his
imaginary stores appear to be strictly limited. ‘Relucent tin,’ however,
bordered the breastplate presented by Achilles to Eumelus as a
consolation-prize in the Patroclean games; the chariot of Diomed was
‘overlaid with gold and tin’;[344] the cuirass of Agamemnon was inlaid
with parallel stripes, and the buckler of Agamemnon decorated with
bosses of tin.
Footnote 343:
Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, p. 402.
Footnote 344:
_Iliad_, xxiii. 503.
The metal was also turned to account by Hephæstus for the purpose of
adding to the effect and variety of his delineations on the Shield of
Achilles. But we get no hint as to how it came into Achæan hands; no
rich man’s treasure contains it; and it drops completely out of sight in
the Odyssey.
Tin corrodes so readily that its extreme archæological rarity is not
surprising. None has been found, either at Mycenæ or in any part of the
stratified débris at Hissarlik.[345] Lead, on the other hand, has been
disinterred from all the Trojan cities, and was in use at Mycenæ, both
pure, and alloyed with silver. Among the objects brought to light there
was a leaden figure of Aphrodite, doubtless an idol,[346] and a vessel
in stag-shape composed of silver mixed with half its weight of
lead.[347] The latter substance is unmentioned in the Odyssey, but is
twice familiarly alluded to in the Iliad. Its cheapness and commonness
can be gathered from the circumstance incidentally disclosed, that poor
fishermen attached pieces of it as weights to their lines.[348] Its
quality of softness comes in to illustrate the ease with which the spear
of Iphidamas was turned by the silver in the belt of Agamemnon.[349]
Footnote 345:
Schliemann, _Troy_, pp. 31, 162.
Footnote 346:
Schuchhardt and Sellers, _op. cit._ p. 67.
Footnote 347:
Schliemann, _Mycenæ_, p. 257.
Footnote 348:
_Iliad_, xxiv. 80.
Footnote 349:
_Ib._ xi. 237.
Tin and lead made part of the booty taken in the land of Midian by the
Israelites, as well as of the Asiatic tribute paid to early Egyptian
conquerors. But the lead disposed of by the Achæans of the Iliad was
most likely brought by the Phœnicians from southern Spain; and the
surmise is plausible that the Homeric word, _molubdos_—lead—-otherwise
isolated and unexplained, may have been transferred, by the same agency,
from the perishing Iberian to the vigorous Greek tongue.[350]
Footnote 350:
Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities_, p. 217.
The Greek name for iron, _sideros_, is equally destitute of known
affinities. It has, indeed, sometimes been deemed cognate with the Latin
_sidus_, a star, on the ground that meteoric, or star-sent iron was the
earliest form of the metal made available for human purposes; but modern
philologists do not see their way to admitting the connexion. The
coincidence is impressive, yet may, none the less, be wholly misleading.
The Homeric poems testify to everyday experience of the powers and
faculties of iron. In the Iliad, knives are made of it, and rustic
implements of all sorts; iron-tipped arrows are sped from tough bows;
iron axes perform the rough work of the forest and farm-yard. The
Odyssean functions of the metal cover a still wider range. The iron age,
just beginning in the first Epic, has pretty well made good its footing
in the second. Thus, Beloch[351] has pointed out that, while _chalkos_
is mentioned 279, _sideros_ only 23 times in the Iliad, the proportion
has become, in the Odyssey, 80 to 29; and his detailed analysis
partially supports the conclusion that iron comes most prominently into
view in the latest portions of both poems. Yet no amount of skill in
critical carving can divide off a section of either in which ignorance
of the metal prevails. The differences are only in degrees of
acquaintanceship.
Footnote 351:
_Rivista di Filologia_, t. ii. p. 55.
The diversity in this respect between the Odyssey and Iliad can be
perceived at a glance by contrasting the weapons Odysseus left behind
him at Ithaca with those he wielded before Troy. The first set were of
iron, probably of steel, the existence of which is implied in the
practice of tempering by immersion in cold water, referred to in
connexion with the feat of plunging a hot stake into the vast orbit of
the Cyclops’ solitary eye.
And from the burning eye-ball the fierce steam
Singed all his brows, and the deep roots of sight
Crackled with fire. As when in the cold stream
Some smith the axe untempered, fiery white,
Dips hissing; for thence comes the iron’s might;
So did his eye hiss, and he roared again.[352]
Footnote 352:
_Odyssey_, ix. 391-95 (Worsley’s trans.).
Iron or steel has even reached, in the Odyssey, the stage of proverbial
familiarity as the material for arms. _Sideros_ stands for sword in a
maxim which may be translated ‘Cold steel masters the man,’[353]
signifying that when weapons are at hand, bloodshed is not far off. In
the Iliad, on the contrary, swords and spears are invariably of bronze;
and the commentators’ _caveat_ marks the lines presenting the
iron-headed arrow of Pandarus, and the iron mace of Areithöus. The
passage, too, is not exempt from their suspicions, in which Achilles
offers, as prizes in the Funeral Games, a ‘massy clod’ of
freshly-smelted iron, and two sets of iron axe-heads.
Footnote 353:
_Ib._ xvi. 294.
The scanty use made of _sideros_ in the compounding of Homeric
epithets,[354] no less than its total neglect in the formation of proper
names, is a further argument for the comparatively late introduction of
the metal. More especially when the plentifulness of derivatives from
_chalkos_ is taken into consideration. Nevertheless, a good deal of
allowance has to be made, in this matter, for what may be called
ethnical caprice. So the Teutons excluded copper from among the elements
of their local and personal appellations, while admitting gold and iron;
those of the Slavs were coined from gold, silver, and iron; the Celts
excluding from employment for the purpose all the metals except
iron.[355] More decisive is the designation of a smith as _chalkeus_,
irrespective of the particular metal wrought by him, showing that the
term had been fixed when neither gold nor iron, but only copper or
bronze, was welded in Achæan forges. _Nam prior æris fuit quam ferri
cognitus usus._
Footnote 354:
Beloch, _loc. cit._ p. 50.
Footnote 355:
Schrader and Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 194.
Iron, copper, and gold served as the Homeric media of exchange.
Definitions of value, however, are always by head of oxen. The golden
armour of Glaucus, for instance, was worth one hundred, the bronze
equipment of Diomed, inconsiderately taken in exchange by the chivalrous
Lycian, no more than nine oxen,[356] and the figures may be considered
to represent the proportionate value of those two metals. Iron probably
occupied an intermediate position. It must, however, have been much
cheaper in Ithaca than in the Troad. For, since the Taphians are said to
have conveyed it in ships to Cyprus, where they bartered it for copper,
it was evidently mined and smelted in notable quantities on the mainland
of Epirus.
Footnote 356:
_Iliad_, vi. 235.
Iron has no decorative function in the Homeric Poems. It contributes
nothing to the polymetallic splendours of the palaces of Menelaus and
Alcinous, of the Shield of Achilles, or of the Breastplate of Agamemnon.
Except where it furnishes an axletree for the chariot of Heré, it is
never employed in purposeful combination with any other substance.
Esteem, rather than admiration, seems, in fact, to be considered its
due. Its colour is described, usually as grey, sometimes as violet; and
the distinction may possibly, as has been supposed,[357] mark the
observed difference between the hoary appearance of newly fractured
iron, and the bluish gleam of steel blades. Nevertheless, an arbitrary
element in Homeric tints has often to be admitted. Iron is, however,
chiefly characterised in the Iliad and Odyssey—and with indisputable
justice—as ‘hard to work.’ It demands, indeed, far more strenuous
treatment than its ancient rival, copper; and the difficulties connected
with its production and working long retarded the prevalence of its use.
Metallurgy advanced but slowly to the point of being dominated by its
influence.
Footnote 357:
Buchholz, _Homer. Realien_, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 335.
This was probably first reached in Mesopotamia. Some Chaldean graves
have been found to contain immense quantities of iron, of the best
quality, and wrought with the finest skill.[358] One, opened by Place at
Khorsabad, was a veritable magazine of chains and implements, still
recognisable, though of course partly devoured by rust. They dated from
about the eighth century B.C.; but the metal had been in some degree
available for ages previously. In Egypt, although _men_ (iron) may have
been known under the early Memphite dynasties, the nature of the
hieroglyph employed to denote it proves that copper had the precedence.
Utensils of iron were enumerated among the spoils of Thothmes III., in
the seventeenth century, B.C.;[359] _barzel_ has a place in the Books of
Moses, and was wrought at Tyre in the days of king Hiram, and no doubt
indefinitely earlier. The Latin _ferrum_, indeed (equivalent to the
Semitic _barezum_) testifies, it is held, to the Phœnician introduction
of the metal to Italy in the twelfth century, B.C.[360]
Footnote 358:
Perrot et Chipiez, _Hist. de l’Art dans l’Antiquité_, t. ii. p. 720.
Footnote 359:
Lepsius, _Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes_, p. _missing
page_ See this transcriber note.
Footnote 360:
Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, p. 145.
Its still earlier diffusion through Greece is only, then, what might
have been expected: and the complete acquaintance with it manifested in
the Homeric poems conveys, in itself, no presumption of lateness in
their origin. But there are archæological difficulties. Prehistoric iron
is unaccountably scarce in the neighbourhood of the Ægean. True, it is
of a perishable nature; but where not even a ferruginous stain survives,
it is difficult to believe that objects made out of iron once existed.
Until lately, iron was believed to be entirely absent from the ruins
both at Hissarlik and Mycenæ, as well as from those of Orchomenos and
Tiryns. But in 1890, Dr. Schliemann, in clearing the foundations of a
building on the Trojan Pergamus, came upon two lumps of the missing
substance; and some finger-rings composed of it are among the trophies
of the recent excavations carried on in the lower city of Mycenæ, under
the auspices of the Greek Archæological Society.[361] But the metal was
then evidently very rare, although the ‘bee-hive tombs,’ where it was
discovered, belong to a later stage of Mycenæan history than the
‘shaft-graves’ of the citadel. Still, the gap previously supposed to
divide, at this point, the Homeric from the Mycenæan world, has to a
certain extent been bridged; and other discrepancies may, in like
manner, be qualified, if not removed, by further research.
Footnote 361:
Schuchhardt, _op. cit._ pp. 332, 296.
The metals chiefly employed in Homeric verse to typify abstract
qualities are bronze and iron. The Shakespearian use of ‘golden’ to
convey delightfulness of almost any kind, as in the expressions
‘_golden_ cadence of poesy,’ ‘a _golden_ mind,’ ‘_golden_ joys,’
‘_golden_ sleep,’ and so on, is paralleled only by the Homeric ‘_golden_
Aphrodite.’ Lead does not exemplify, with the Greek poet, heaviness and
sloth, nor silver the gentle ripple of sweet sounds. But death, as ‘a
sleep of bronze,’ comes before us in all its unrelenting sternness;
Stentor has a ‘voice of bronze;’ a ‘memory of bronze’ was needed for
exceptional feats of recitation; and the ‘iron noise’ of battle went up
to a ‘bronzen sky’ during the struggle ensuing upon the fall of
Patroclus. In the Odyssey, the sky is alternately of bronze and of iron,
the same idea of stability—of a ‘brave, o’erhanging firmament’ being
conveyed by both epithets.[362] Moreover, iron is there the recognised
symbol of pitilessness, strength of mind, and self-command. Odysseus
listens, masked in an ‘aspect of iron,’ while Penelope, strangely
touched by his still unrecognised presence, recites the weary story of
her sorrows. A heart _steeled_—as we should say—against pity was said to
be ‘of iron,’ as was that of Achilles against Hector in the days of his
‘iron indignation’ at the slaying of his loved comrade; and silence and
secrecy, even in a woman, were represented by the rigidity of that
unbending metal. Such metaphors occur, it is true, more frequently in
the Odyssey than in the Iliad; but the conception upon which they are
founded is present throughout the whole sphere of Homeric thought. There
are, nevertheless, as we have seen, clearly definable differences, in
the matter of metallic acquisitions, between the two great Epics. The
Iliad knows six, while the Odyssey refers only to four of these
substances, tin and lead not chancing to be noticed in its cantos; and
iron, in their record, has made a considerable advance upon its Iliadic
status. This is unquestionably a circumstance to be taken into account
in attempting to deal with the Homeric problem.
Footnote 362:
Hayman’s _Odyssey_, vol. i. p. 63.
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