It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that "we never hear of the corslet in the case of Aias...." [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 576.] Robert, however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among "al the [Greek: teuchea]" which Aias puts on for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII. 193, 206-207).

In the same Book (VII. 101-103, 122) the same difficulty occurs. Menelaus offers to fight Hector, and says, "I will put on my harness" [Greek: thooraxomai], and does "put on his fair pieces of armour" [Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends "joyfully take his pieces of armour" [Greek: teuchea] "from his shoulders" (Iliad, VII. 206-207). They take off pieces of armour, in the plural, and a shield cannot be spoken of in the plural; while the sword would not be taken off—it was worn even in peaceful costume.

Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents of corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines which disprove it. Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise whatever passage does not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut, supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of Thetis to Hephaestus for the very purpose of dragging in a corslet. [Footnote: Leaf, Note to Iliad, xviii. 460, 461.] If there is no objection to a line except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the logic in excising the line because one happens to think that corslets are later than the oldest parts of the Iliad?

Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case mention a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow strikes Diomede "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the corslet." Thirteen lines later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the swift shaft right through out of Diomede's shoulder, and the blood darted up through the pliant chiton." We do not know what the word here translated "pliant" [Greek: streptos] means, and Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of mail, chain, or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this case, if a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or rings of bronze be meant, gualon cannot mean a large "plate," as it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that [Greek: streptos chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail." [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, vol. i. p, 306.] Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As usual, we come to a deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one can see that, in the space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator who wrote V. i 12, i 13 could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing a corslet in V. 99; and even if the poet could forget, which is out of the question, the editor of 540 B.C. was simply defrauding his employer, Piaistratus, if he did not bring a remedy for the stupid fault of the poet. When this or that hero is not specifically said to be wearing a corslet, it is usually because the poet has no occasion to mention it, though, as we have seen, a man is occasionally smitten, in the midriff, say, without any remark on the flimsy piece of mail.

That corslets are usually taken for granted as present by the poet, even when they are not explicitly named, seems certain. He constantly represents the heroes as "stripping the pieces of mail" [Greek: teuchea], when they have time and opportunity, from fallen foes. If only the shield is taken, if there is nothing else in the way of bronze body armour to take, why have we the plural, [Greek: teuchea]? The corslet, as well as the shield, must be intended. The stripping is usually "from the shoulders," and it is "from his shoulders" that Hector hopes to strip the corslet of Diomede (Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be sure, which the critics think interpolated. However this may be, the stripping of the (same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of the shield, but must refer to other pieces of armour: "all the pieces of armour." So other pieces of defensive armour besides the shield are throughout taken for granted. If they were not there they could not be stripped. It is the chitons that Agamemnon does something to, in the case of two fallen foes (Iliad, XI. 100), and Aristarchus thought that these chitons were corslets. But the passage is obscure. In Iliad, XI. 373, when Diomede strips helmet from head, shield from shoulder, corslet from breast of Agastrophus, Reichel was for excising the corslet, because it was not mentioned when the hero was struck on the hip joint. I do not see that an inefficient corslet would protect the hip joint. To do that, in our eighteenth century cavalry armour, was the business of a zoster, as may be seen in a portrait of the Chevalier de St. George in youth. It is a thick ribbed zoster that protects the hip joints of the king.

Finally, Mr. Evans observes that the western invaders of Egypt, under Rameses III, are armed, on the monuments, with cuirasses formed of a succession of plates, "horizontal, or rising in a double curve," while the Enkomi ivories, already referred to, corroborate the existence of corslet, zoster, and zoma as articles of defensive armour. [Footnote: Journal of Anthropological Institute, xxx. p. 213.] "Recent discoveries," says Mr. Evans, "thus supply a double corroboration of the Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round shield and the cuirass or [Greek: thoraex] to the earlier epic period... With such a representation before us, a series of Homeric passages on which Dr. Reichel... has exhausted his powers of destructive criticism, becomes readily intelligible." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 214.]

Homer, then, describes armour later than that of the Mycenaean prime, when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave suggest that corslets existed. Homer's men, on the other hand, have, at least in certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and bronze cuirasses of no great resisting power, perhaps in various stages of evolution, from the byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to the breastplate and backplate, though the plates for breast and back certainly appear to be usually worn.

It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea that "the original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with them who slept in the shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that for body armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes: "The armour of Homeric heroes corresponds closely to that of the Mykenaean age as we learn it from the monuments. The heroes wore no breastplate; their only defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean shield...."

This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict the statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh century B.C., or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a breastplate had become absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield" (where ?) "and corslet played a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain number of lines and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically introduced into narratives which originally knew nothing of it." [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. 568.]

On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield of later times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious exceptions," in which the shields are not said to be small or circular. [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p, 575.]

Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory that the original poet described the armour of "the monuments" though they are "of the, prime," while he professedly lived long after the prime—lived in an age when there must have been changes in military equipment. We then cut out, as of the seventh century, whatever passages do not suit our theory. Anybody can prove anything by this method. We might say that the siege scene on the Mycenaean silver vase represents the Mycenaean prime, and that, as there is but one jersey among eight men otherwise stark naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the chitons in the Iliad, these having been interpolated by late poets who did not run about with nothing on. We might call the whole poem late, because the authors know nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers so common on the "monuments." The argument compels Mr. Leaf to assume that a shield can be called [Greek: teuchea] in the plural, so, in Iliad, VII. 122, when the squires of Menelaus "take the [Greek: teuchea] from his shoulders," we are assured that "the shield (aspis) was for the chiefs alone" (we have seen that all the host of Pandarus wore shields), "for those who could keep a chariot to carry them, and squires to assist them in taking off this ponderous defence" (see VII 122). [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. 583.]

We do "see VII. 122," and find that not a single shield, but pieces of gear in the plural number were taken off Menelaus. The feeblest warrior without any assistance could stoop his head and put it through the belt of his shield, as an angler takes off his fishing creel, and there he was, totally disarmed. No squire was needed to disarm him, any more than to disarm Girard in the Chancun de Willame. Nobody explains why a shield is spoken of as a number of things, in the plural, and that constantly, and in lines where, if the poet means a shield, prosody permits him to say a shield, [Greek: therapontes ap oopoon aspid elonto].

It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and classical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often of great size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by belts; and, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and zosters. There is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a targe should not also wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened; the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed.

To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the Iliad, are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.]

There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold ornaments, which could only belong to shields, [Footnote: Ibid., p. 237.] were found, but bronze shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep out bronze- headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.

Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists, we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 629.] At other times they are said to introduce recklessly part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets, while sternly excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of very late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that moment.

Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round buckler." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the Iliad. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as one iron spear point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in deference to tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter of greaves and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind tradition to find Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?

These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these theories cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the theory, are in the iron age, and are, of course, familiar with iron weapons; yet, in conservative deference to tradition, they keep them absolutely out of their rhapsodies. They are equally familiar with bronze corslets, so, reckless this time of tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies which are centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar with small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to the traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent theories which we have been examining is easily discovered. The scholars who hold these opinions see that several things in the Homeric picture of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian tradition, that there could be no long epic in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much the greater part of the Iliad, must necessarily, they say, be the work of continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which, they assume, can only be explained as the result of a compilation of the patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many men in many lands and ages made the Epic, their contributions cannot but be marked by the inevitable changes in manners, customs, beliefs, implements, laws, weapons, and so on, which could not but arise in the long process of time. Yet traces of change in law, religion, manners, and customs are scarcely, if at all, to be detected; whence it logically follows that a dozen generations of irresponsible minstrels and vagrant reciters were learned, conscientious, and staunchly conservative of the archaic tone. Their erudite conservatism, for example, induced them, in deference to the traditions of the bronze age, to describe all weapons as of bronze, though many of the poets were living in an age of weapons of iron. It also prompted them to describe all shields as made on the far-away old Mycenaean model, though they were themselves used to small circular bucklers, with a bracer and a grip, worn on the left arm.

But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets deserted them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays, they eagerly introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves— things of the ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig stating, on the same page, that in the matter of usages "the epic poets shunned, as far as possible, all that was recent," and also that for fear of puzzling their military audiences they did the reverse: "they probably kept account of the arms and armour of their own day." [Footnote: La Question Mycenienne, p. 50. Cf. Note I.] Now the late poets, on this showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always speaking of bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the other hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by talking of enormous targes, slung round the neck.

All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the assumption that the Iliad must be a hotch-potch of many ages. If we assume that, on the whole, it is the work of one age, we see that the poet describes the usages which obtained in his own day. The dead are cremated, not, as in the Mycenaean prime, inhumed. The shield has been strengthened to meet bronze, not stone-tipped, arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they are conservative archaeologists. In that case, though they burn, they would have made their heroes bury their dead, as they did at Mycenas. They do not introduce iron swords and spears, as they must do, if, being late poets, they keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they speak of huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists, then, on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves because they are also reckless innovators.

They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a single "moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from the Mycenaean prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Mycenaean prime by a foreign conquest, a revolution, and the years in which the foreign conquerors acquired the language of their subjects.

In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was time enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime to be evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the descriptions of culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all the facts. The other hypothesis, that the Iliad was begun near the Mycenaean prime and was continued throughout four or five centuries, cannot, first, explain how the Iliad was composed, and, next, it wanders among apparent contradictories and through a maze of inconsistencies.



THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE

We are far from contending that it is always possible to understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we have never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases were clear enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I do not, for example, profess to be sure of what happened when Pandarus shot at Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden buckles of the zoster were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow alighted upon the firm zoster; through the wrought zoster it sped, and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through the mitre he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on even through this," and grazed the hero's flesh (Iliad, IV. I 32 seq.). Menelaus next says that "the glistering zoster in front stayed the dart, and the zoma beneath, and the mitre that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then the surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering zoster and the zoma, and the mitre beneath that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).

Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the corslet was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and the middle of the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the plates met and the zoster was buckled at the side); that the zoster, a mailed belt, buckled just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that the arrow went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through the place where the plates of the corslet met, and then through the mitre, a piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the nature of this mitre and of the zoma I do not know. Was the mitre a separate article or a continuation of the breastplate, lower down, struck by a dropping arrow?

In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the zoma means the waist of the cuirass which is covered by the zoster, and has the upper edge of the mitre or plated apron beneath it fastened round the warrior's body. ... This view is strongly supported by all the archaic vase paintings I have been able to find." [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic studies, vol. iv. pp. 74,75.] We see a "corslet with a projecting rim"; that rim is called zoma and holds the zoster. "The hips and upper part of the thighs were protected either by a belt of leather, sometimes plated, called the mitre, or else only by the lower part of the chiton, and this corresponds exactly with Homeric description." [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, pp. 76, 77.]

At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we have seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry; that "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed that the old warriors were muscular enough to wear circular shields as great as those in the vase of Aristonothos, already described. [Footnote: Ibid., vol. iv p. 285.]

On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple of Reichel. But as to the mitre, he rejects Helbig's and Mr. Ridgeway's opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in front and very narrow behind. Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Ridgeway mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary. [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I.] The zoster is now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (zoma), so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a mitre, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic mitre is just as much an intruder into the armament of the Epos as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr. Leaf suggests, first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the introduction of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic mitre" of Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and three inches behind). "Only as technical skill improved could the final stage, that of the elaborate cuirass, be attained."

This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While arrows were flying thick, as they do fly in the Iliad, men would not reject body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when, if they had skill enough to make a metallic mitre, they could not have been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the linothorex (like the Iroquois cotton thorex), and next, as a rule, superseded that with the bronze thorex, while retaining the huge shield, because the bronze thorex was so inadequate to its purpose of defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming to the shock with heavy spears, and as the bronze thorex really could sometimes keep out an arrow, they reduced the size of their shields, and retained surface enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge of the sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I cannot pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the mitre and zoster really were, beyond being guards of the stomach and lower part of the trunk.



HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS

No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in Mycenaean graves. A quantity of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened leather caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band of the same round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of bronze? Spata and the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the Enkomi ivories show similar headgear. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 196, 197.]

This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in Iliad, Book X., in the account of the hasty arraying of two spies in the night of terror after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the Iliad are unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets, and bronze greaves. [Dislocated Footnote: Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxx. pp. 209-215.] [Footnote: Iliad, X. 255-265.]

The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist, who knew that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in Agamemnon's time, but that leather caps with boars' tusks were in fashion; while again, as we shall see, he is said to know nothing about heroic costume (cf. The Doloneia). As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs nowhere else in Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice—a hurried council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of two spies, who wish to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's evidence as to the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks testifies to a survival of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets, not to his own minute antiquarian research.



GREAVES

Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41). But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of greaves?

Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean grave at Enkomi (Tomb XV.), _accompanied_ by _an early type_ of _bronze_ dagger, while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in the Balkan peninsula at Glassinavc. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute, pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.] Thus all Homer's description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and cannot be cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method" of Dr. Reichel.

A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while the men of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the ground erect on the spikes of the butts" (X. 153). Aristotle mentions that this was still the usage of the Illyrians in his day. [Footnote: Poctica, 25.] Though the word for the spike in the butt (sauroter) does not elsewhere occur in the Iliad, the practice of sticking the spears erect in the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean upon their shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears are planted by their sides." No butt-spikes have been found in graves of the Mycenaean prime. The sauroter was still used, or still existed, in the days of Herodotus. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.]

On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear of four centuries—that view we hope to have shown to be a mass of inconsistencies—but describes a state of military equipment in advance of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that of the late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar with some uses of iron, of which, as we shall see, scarcely any has been found in Mycenaean graves of the central period, save in the shape of rings. Homer never mentions rings of any metal.



CHAPTER IX

BRONZE AND IRON

Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they give, with the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious account of the contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is employed in the making of weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &c.); iron is employed (and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such as knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use an axle tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and pastoral life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the poets; it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields epithets indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn endurance. These epithets are more frequent in the Odyssey and the "later" Books of the Iliad than in the "earlier" Books of the Iliad; but, as articles made of iron, the Odyssey happens to mention only one set of axes, which is spoken of ten times—axes and adzes as a class—and "iron bonds," where "iron" probably means "strong," "not to be broken." [Footnote: In these circumstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written thus: "In Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in comparison with bronze, but the proportion is greater in the Odyssey (25 iron, 80 bronze) than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279 bronze).—Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339. These statistics obviously do not prove that, at the date of the composition of the Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more common, or that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the Iliad was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal: the Iliad is a military poem, while the Odyssey is an epic of peace; consequently the Iliad is much more copious in references to bronze than the Odyssey has any occasion to be. Wives are far more frequently mentioned in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, but nobody will argue that therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading, when we remember that ten out of the twenty references are only one reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also proposed to leave six references to iron in the Iliad out of the reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted without detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic formula descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as bronze, gold, and women. The existence of the formula proves familiarity with iron, and to excise it merely because it contradicts a theory is purely arbitrary.—Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.]. The statement of facts given here is much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze and iron in Homer. [Footnote: Helbig, Das Homerischi Epos, pp. 330, 331. 1887.] Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic there is much more frequent mention of iron implements than of iron weapons of war." He then gives examples, which we produce later, and especially remarks on what Achilles says when he offers a mass of iron as a prize in the funeral games of Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will serve for the purposes of the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech from the son of Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the military uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in vogue while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of Achilles are appropriate and intelligible.

The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose that the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is an age when iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for armour, or for swords or spears, which must be of excellent temper, without great weight in proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in Homer for some knives, which are never said to be used in battle (not even for dealing the final stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the misericorde), for axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be thick and weighty behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the shepherd and ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads, and so forth.

As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us, these relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages of Mycenaean culture which are represented in the tholos of Vaphio and the graves, earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the later Mycenaean graves iron is found only in the form of finger rings (iron rings were common in late Greece). [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.] Iron was scarce in the Cypro- Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with a carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps of iron, one of them apparently the head of a club, were found in Schliemann's "Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords, spear-heads, knives, and axes are all of bronze in the age called "Mycenaean." But we do not know whether iron implements may not yet be found in the sepulchres of Thetes, and other poor and landless men. The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of bronze.

Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership of "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour" (in the smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula for describing a man of wealth. [Footnote: Iliad, VI. 48; IX. 365-366; X. 379; XI. 133; Odyssey, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy? [Footnote: Iliad, VII. 472-475.] Athene, disguised as Mentes, is carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for copper. The poets are certainly not describing an age in which only a man of wealth might indulge in the rare and extravagant luxury of an iron ring: iron was a common commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves, bronze, and other such matters. Common as it was, Homer never once mentions its use for defensive armour, or for swords and spears.

Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will cut his own throat. [Footnote: Iliad XVIII. 34.] But no knife is ever used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats of victims (see Iliad, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said to be of iron, in this last passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. [Footnote: Iliad, XI. 844.] It is the knife of Achilles that is called "the iron," and on "the iron" perish the cattle in Iliad, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf says that by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of small size." [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, xxiii. 30, Note.] This is incorrect; the Odyssey speaks of great axes habitually made of iron. [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391.] But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon, used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III. 271-292.

The only two specimens of weapons named by Homer as of iron are one arrow-head, used by Pandarus, [Footnote: Iliad, IV. 123.] and one mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithous. To fight with an iron mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The Mace man." [Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.] The case is mentioned by Nestor as curious and unusual.

Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron casse tete in a pleasant way. Since he wrote his Companion to the Iliad, 1902, he has become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro, Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Blass, that the origin of our Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered" freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this passage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus." [Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.] If Pisistratus was pleased with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a right to interfere, but we need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).

Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, [Footnote: Iliad, XXIII. 850.] and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey. But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but peaceful implements.

As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron, in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.

Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one iron mace, noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever said to be of iron.

The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge in a sword said to be of iron. The god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by him to Hector. [Footnote: Iliad XVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.] This bronze sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the god. The sword of Paris is of bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the Odyssey. [Footnote: Iliad, III. 334-335] Bronze is the sword which he brought from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus in Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the walls of Ilios. [Footnote: Odyssey, X. 162, 261-262] There are other examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably said to be of bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.

Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the Homeric warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any man used a spear or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets, in an age of iron weapons, always spoke of bronze, out of deference to tradition, they must have puzzled their iron-using military patrons.

Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of bronze, like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned, except in the two cases given, not with [blank space] but with implements, which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree "with the iron," that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles "will cut his own throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a thing never used in battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the iron," that is, the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron," that is, through the holes in the blade of the iron axes. [Footnote: For this peculiar kind of Mycenaean axe with holes in the blade, see the design of a bronze example from Vaphio in Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean Age, p. 207, fig. 94.] Thus Homer never says that this or that was done "with the iron" in the case of any but one weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the bow-string to his breast and to the bow." [Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.] Whoever wrote that line was writing in an age, we may think, when arrow-heads were commonly of iron; but in Homer, when the metal of the arrow-head is mentioned, except, in this one case, it is always bronze. The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an early type, the shaft did not run into the socket of the arrow-head; the tang of the arrow-head, on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was whipped on with sinew. [Iliad, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method, still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The line about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early enough, for the arrow-head is of a primitive kind—socketless—and primitive is the attitude of the archer: he "drew the arrow to his breast." On the Mycenaean silver bowl, representing a siege, the archers draw to the breast, in the primitive style, as does the archer on the bronze dagger with a representation of a lion hunt. The Assyrians and Khita drew to the ear, as the monuments prove, and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean" archer of the ivory draught-box from Enkomi. [Footnote: Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. p. 210.] In these circumstances we cannot deny that the poet may have known iron arrow-heads.

We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use of an iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs twice. In Iliad, XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships, "they were fighting with sharp axes and battle-axes" ([Greek text: axinai]) "and with great swords, and spears armed at butt and tip." At and on the ships, men would set hand to whatever tool of cutting edge was accessible. Seiler thinks that only the Trojans used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging the ships: he follows the scholiast. [Greek text: Axinae], however, [Footnote: Iliad, XIII. 611.] may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe," as a Trojan, Peisandros, fights with an [Greek text: Axinae], and this is the only place in the Iliad, except XV. 711, where the thing is said to be used as a weapon. But it is not an iron axe; it is "of fine bronze." Only one bronze battle-axe, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, is known to have been found in Scotland, though there are many bronze heads of axes which were tools.

Axes ([Greek text: pelekeis]) were implements, tools of the carpenter, woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not weapons of war of the Achaeans.

As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a synonym for axe and for knife. [Footnote: Iliad, IV. 485] In Iliad, XIII. 391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes. In Iliad, XXIII. 114, woodcutters' axes are employed in tree-felling, but the results are said to be produced [Greek text: tanaaekei chalcho], "by the long-edged bronze," where the word [Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze axe for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote: Iliad, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered by Achilles as a prize for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are implements of iron. [Footnote: Iliad, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3, 81, 97.]

In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering iron, we read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in chill water, for thus men temper iron." [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391-393.] He is not using iron to make a sword or spear, but a tool-adze or axe. The poet is perfectly consistent. There are also examples both of bronze axes and, apparently, of bronze knives. Thus, though the woodcutter's or carpenter's axe is of bronze in two passages cited, iron is the usual material of the axe or adze. Again we saw, when Achilles gives a mass of iron as a prize in the games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion it into sword or spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or ploughman for domestic implements, [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad (1902), XXIII. line 30, Note.] so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go to the city for iron implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is scarcely at the proper point of view. He says, [Footnote: Iliad, XXIII. 835, Note.] "the idea of a state of things when the ploughman and shepherd forge their own tools from a lump of raw iron has a suspicious appearance of a deliberate attempt to represent from the inner consciousness an archaic state of civilisation. In Homeric times the [Greek: chalceus] is already specialised as a worker in metals...." However, Homer does not say that the ploughman and shepherd "forge their own tools." A Homeric chief, far from a town, would have his own smithy, just as the laird of Runraurie (now Urrard) had his smithy at the time of the battle of Killicrankie (1689). Mackay's forces left their impedimenta "at the laird's smithy," says an eye-witness. [Footnote: Napier's Life Of Dundee, iii. p. 724.]

The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his fancy a prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even historical novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely attempted such an effort.

This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived far from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword- blades, which Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the Continent. The Andrea Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the clans were of foreign manufacture. The Highland smiths did such rough iron work as was needed for rural purposes. Perhaps the Homeric chief may have sometimes been a craftsman like the heroes of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus himself, notably an excellent carpenter, may have been as good a sword-smith, but every hero was not so accomplished.

In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural society.

The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the material for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary battle-axe mentioned; and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools, knives, carpenters' axes, adzes, and agricultural implements, with the rare exceptions which we have cited in the case of bronze knives and axes. Either this distinction—iron for tools and implements; bronze for armour, swords, and spears—prevailed throughout the period of the Homeric poets or poet; or the poets invented such a stage of culture; or poets, some centuries later, deliberately kept bronze for weapons only, while introducing iron for implements. In that case they were showing archaeological conscientiousness in following the presumed earlier poets of the bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.

Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the [blank space] certainly based on old lays and legends which survive in the Edda, we find that the poets of the Nibelungenlied introduce chivalrous and Christian manners. They do not archaeologise. The poets of the French Chansons de Geste (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) bring their own weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote age of Charlemagne, which they know from legends and cantilenes. Again, the later remanieurs of the earliest Chansons de Geste modernise the details of these poems. But, per impossibile, and for the sake of argument, suppose that the later interpolators and continuators of the Homeric lays were antiquarian precisians, or, on the other hand, "deliberately attempted to reproduce from their inner consciousness an archaic state of civilisation." Suppose that, though they lived in an age of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that the old heroes "had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze, and there was no black iron." [Footnote: Hesiod, Works and Days, pp. 250, 251.] In that case, why did the later interpolating poets introduce iron as the special material of tools and implements, knives and axes, in an age when they knew that there was no iron? Savants such as, by this theory, the later poets of the full-blown age of iron were, they must have known that the knives and axes of the old heroes were made of bronze. In old votive offerings in temples and in any Mycenaean graves which might be opened, the learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their eyes knives and axes of bronze. [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, i. 413-416.] The knife of Agamemnon ([Greek: machaira]), which hangs from his girdle, beside his sword, [Footnote: Iliad, III. 271; XIX. 252.] corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the handles of these dirks have a ring for suspension. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 204.] But these knives, in Mycenaean graves, are of bronze, and of bronze are the axes in the Mycenaean deposits and the dagger of Enkomi. [Footnote: Ibid., pp. 145, 207, 208, 256. Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol xxx. p, 214.]

Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the spears and swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who describe them as of bronze, not know that their knives and axes were also of bronze? Why did they describe the old knives and axes as of iron, while Hesiod knew, and could have told them—did tell them, in fact—that they were of bronze? Clearly the theory that Homeric poets were archaeological precisians is impossible. They describe arms as of bronze, tools usually as of iron, because they see them to be such in practice.

The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of affairs, such as no poets could invent and adhere to with uniformity. We are accustomed in archaeology to seeing the bronze sword pass by a gradual transition into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of iron never, in any one specified case, use iron sword blades or spears. The greatest chiefs, men said to be rich in gold and iron, always use swords and spears of bronze in Iliad and Odyssey.

The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt, "in the heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves have been explored. The swords pass from bronze to iron with bronze hilts, and, finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze are fitted with iron edges. Axes of iron were much more common than axes of bronze. [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, i. 413-416.] The axes were fashioned in the old shapes of the age of bronze, were not of the bipennis Mycenaean model—the double axe—nor of the shape of the letter D, very thick, with two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of Vaphio. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.] Probably the axes through which Odysseus shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr. Monro, and, much earlier, Mr. Butcher and I have argued. [Footnote: Ibid. (1901), vol. ii. Book XIX. line 572. Note. Butcher and Lang, Odyssey, Appendix (1891).]

At Hallstatt there was the normal evolution from bronze swords and axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's men in his time not made this step, seeing that they were familiar with the use of iron? Why do they use bronze for swords and spears, iron for tools? The obvious answer is that they could temper bronze for military purposes much better than they could temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius (ii. 30; ii. 33) for the truly execrable quality of the iron of the Celtic invaders of Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad as, or worse than, British bayonets; they always "doubled up." "Their long iron swords were easily bent, and could only give one downward stroke with any effect; but after this the edges got so turned and the blades so bent that, unless they had time to straighten them with the foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second blow." [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, vol. i. 408.] If the heroes in Homer's time possessed iron as badly tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C., they had every reason to prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all their military weapons, while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A woodcutter's axe might have any amount of weight and thickness of iron behind the edge; not so a sword blade or a spear point. [Footnote: Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me that the story of Polybius may be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves are often found doubled up; possibly they are thus made dead, like the owner, and their spirits are thus set free to be of use to his spirit. Finding doubled up iron swords in Celtic graves, the Romans, M. Beinach suggests, may have explained their useless condition by the theory that they doubled up in battle, leaving their owners easy victims, and this myth was accepted as fact by Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth, nor very remote from the events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze grave-weapons in our Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of the warriors of the age of bronze. We later give examples of the doubling up, in battle, of Scandinavian iron swords as late as 1000 A.D.]

In the Iliad we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in dealing a stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to bronze swords, especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a hilt of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight shelf of the bronze hilt riveted with three nails on to the bronze blade.

Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword brake at the hilt." [Footnote: Iliad, XVI. 339.] The sword of Menelaus broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of Paris. [Footnote: Iliad, III. 349, 380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze. [Footnote: Iliad (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby.

The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and, in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once against a lion, once over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and once at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not follow from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword could be used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many thrusts as strokes with the bronze sword in the Iliad. [Footnote: Twenty-four cuts to eleven lunges, in the Iliad.] As the poet constantly dwells on the "long edge" of the bronze swords and makes heroes use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords were of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton (1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the point against Cumberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.

If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as bad as that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference for bronze over iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the fighters do not very often come to sword strokes; they fight mainly with the spear, except in pursuit, now and then. But when they do strike, they cleave heads and cut off arms. They could not do this with bronze rapiers, such as those with which men give point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean gems. But Mr. Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards there are two types of swords in the Mycenaean world—one an exaggerated dagger riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a flat flanged tang running the whole length of the hilt, and covered on either face by ornamental grip plates riveted on. This sword, though still of bronze, can deal a very effective cut; and, as the Mycenaeans had no armour for body or head," (?) "the danger of breaking or bending the sword on a cuirass or helmet did not arise." [Footnote: Classical Review, xvi. 72.] The danger did exist in Homer's time, as we have seen. But a bronze sword, published by Tsountas and Manatt (Mycenaean Age, p. 199, fig. 88), is emphatically meant to give both point and edge, having a solid handle—a continuation of the blade—and a very broad blade, coming to a very fine point. Even in Grave V. at Mycenae, we have a sword blade so massive at the top that it was certainly capable of a swashing blow. [Footnote: Schuchardt, Schliemann's Excavations, p. 265, fig. 269.] The sword of the charioteer on the stele of Grave V. is equally good for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut and thrust bronze sword than the one found at Ialysus no gentleman could wish to handle. [Footnote: Furtwangler und Loeschke, Myk. Va. Taf. D.] Homer, in any case, says that his heroes used bronze swords, well adapted to strike. If his age had really good bronze, and iron as bad as that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand years later, their preference of bronze over iron for weapons needs no explanation. If their iron was not so bad as that of the Celts, their military conservatism might retain bronze for weapons, while in civil life they often used iron for implements.

The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on the supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used it for implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust life and victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot test the temper of the earliest known iron swords found in Greece, for rust hath consumed them, and I know not that the temper of the Mycenaean bronze swords has been tested against helmets of bronze. I can thus give no evidence from experiment.

There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction— iron for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in Odyssey, XVI. 294; XIX. 13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike harness of Odysseus from the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain the removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in your cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and this wooing; for iron of himself draweth a man to him." The proverb is manifestly of an age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron except one eccentric mace and one arrow-head of primitive type. The line in the Odyssey must therefore be a very late addition; it may be removed without injuring the sense of the passage in which it occurs. [Footnote: This fact, in itself, is of course no proof of interpolation. Cf. Helbig, op. cit., p. 331. He thinks the line very late.] If, on the other hand, the line be as old as the oldest parts of the poem, the author for once forgets his usual antiquarian precision.

We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early Greece an age when weapons were all of bronze while implements were often of iron, or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented that state of things. Now early poets never invent in this way; singing to an audience of warriors, critical on such a point, they speak of what the warriors know to be actual, except when, in a recognised form of decorative exaggeration, they introduce

"Masts of the beaten gold And sails of taffetie."

Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were composed iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for reasons not devoid of plausibility.

Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not of iron. [Footnote: Ancient Bronze Implements, p. 8 (1881), citing Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. Iliad, III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.] Sir John remarks that "for a considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows." Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and Odyssey, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote: Scutum Herculis, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600 B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears. [Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing.

These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M. Berard's book, Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee (Paris, 1902). M. Berard has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard, perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword straight...." [Footnote: Berard, i. 435.]

So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.

On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters' axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led, on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used by sword-smiths.

The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. [Footnote: Grundfrager des Homerkritik, pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.] I do not, however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:—

(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold, and girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague about iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these passages is neither more nor less definite than his mental picture of the other commodities. He calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he knows, in fact, all about it. He does not tell us what the owner is going to do with the gold and the bronze and the girls, any more than he tells us what is to be done with the iron. Such information was rather in the nature of a luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses of all four commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.

(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "— said of Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are supposed to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I see no ground for this inference.

(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates were made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the days of St. John.

(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron—a remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron before spears and swords were of iron.

(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut his throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there is no other mention of suicide in the Iliad. It does not follow that suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once, since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."

(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, wahrend 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 Mycenienne. 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 Mycenienne, 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, a priori probable that the later poets took into account the contemporary military state of things. Their audience would have been much perturbed (bien cheques) 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 cheques, 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 cheques) "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 ete bien choques" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his note), on hearing of nothing but "armes auxquels ils n'etaient pas habitues,"—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.

Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military contests in bowmanship, are un sujet a fait nouveau: a theme so very modern that a poet, in singing of it, could let himself go, and dare to speak of iron implements. But where was the novelty? All peoples who use the bow in war practise archery in time of peace. The poet, moreover, speaks of bronze tools, axes and knives, in other parts of the Iliad; neither tools nor bronze tools constitute un sujet tout a fait nouveau. There was nothing new in shooting with a bow and nothing new in the existence of axes. Bows and axes were as familiar to the age of stone and to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's explanation, therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better explanation is offered, we return to the theory, rejected by Dr. Helbig, that implements and tools were often, not always, of iron, while weapons were of bronze in the age of the poet. Dr. Helbig rejects this opinion. He writes: "We cannot in any way admit that, at a period when the socks of the plough, the lance points of shepherds" (which the poet never describes as of iron), "and axe- heads were of iron, warriors still used weapons of bronze." [Footnote: op. laud., p. 53.] But it is logically possible to admit that this was the real state of affairs, while it is logically impossible to admit that bows and tools were "new subjects"; and that late poets, when they sang of military gear, "tenaient compte de l'armement contemporain," carefully avoiding the peril of bewildering their hearers by speaking of antiquated arms, and, at the same time, spoke of nothing but antiquated arms—weapons of bronze—and of war chariots, to fighting men who did not use war chariots and did use weapons of iron.

These logical contradictions beset all arguments in which it is maintained that "the late poets" are anxious archaisers, and at the same time are eagerly introducing the armour and equipment of their own age. The critics are in the same quandary as to iron and bronze as traps them in the case of large shields, small bucklers, greaves, and corslets. They are obliged to assign contradictory attitudes to their "late poets." It does not seem possible to admit that a poet, who often describes axes as of iron in various passages, does so in his account of a peaceful contest in bowmanship, because contests in bowmanship are UN sujet TOUT a FAIT NOUVEAU; and so he feels at liberty to describe axes as of iron, while he adheres to bronze as the metal for weapons. He, or one of the Odyssean poets, had already asserted (Odyssey, IX. 391) that iron was the metal for adzes and axes.

Dr. Helbig's argument [Footnote: La Question Mycenienne, p. 54.] does not explain the facts. The bow of Eurytus and the uses to which Odysseus is to put it have been in the poet's mind all through the conduct of his plot, and there is nothing to suggest that the exploit of bowmanship is a very new lay, tacked on to the Odyssey.

After writing this chapter, I observed that my opinion had been anticipated by S. H. Naber. [Footnote: Quaestiones Homericae, p. 60. Amsterdam. Van der Post, 1897.] "Quod Herodoti diserto testimonio novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio nondum inventa erat necdum bene noverant mortales, uti opinor, acuere ferrum. Hinc pauperes homines ubi possunt, ferro utuntur; sed in plerisque rebus turn domi turn militiae imprimis coguntur uti aere...."

The theory of Mr. Ridgeway as to the relative uses of iron and bronze is not, by myself, very easily to be understood. "The Homeric warrior ... has regularly, as we have seen, spear and sword of iron." [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, vol. i. p. 301.] As no spear or sword of iron is ever mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey, as both weapons are always of bronze when the metal is specified, I have not "seen" that they are "regularly," or ever, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the axes and knives already mentioned—which are not spears or swords, and are sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the Odyssey, "Iron of itself doth attract a man." But if this line is genuine and original, it does not apply to the state of things in the Iliad, while it contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which swords and spears are ALWAYS of bronze when their metal is mentioned. If the line reveals the true state of things, then throughout the Odyssey, if not throughout the Iliad, the poets when they invariably speak of bronze swords and spears invariably say what they do not mean. If they do this, how are we to know when they mean what they say, and of what value can their evidence on points of culture be reckoned? They may always be retaining traditional terms as to usages and customs in an age when these are obsolete.

If the Achaeans were, as in Mr. Ridgeway's theory, a northern people—"Celts"—who conquered with iron weapons a Pelasgian bronze-using Mycenaean people, it is not credible to me that Achaean or Pelasgian poets habitually used the traditional Pelasgian term for the metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in songs chanted before victors who had won their triumph with iron. The traditional phrase of a conquered bronze-using race could not thus survive and flourish in the poetry of an outlandish iron-using race of conquerors.

Mr. Ridgeway cites the Odyssey, wherein we are told that "Euryalus, the Phaeacian, presented to Odysseus a bronze sword, though, as we have seen" (Mr. Ridgeway has seen), "the usual material for all such weapons is iron. But the Phoeacians both belonged to the older race and lived in a remote island, and therefore swords of bronze may well have continued in use in such out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in use everywhere else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had to be satisfied with bronze." [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, p. 305.] Here the poet is allowed to mean what he says. The Phaeacian sword is really of bronze, with silver studs, probably on the hilt (Odyssey, VIII. 401-407), which was of ivory. The "out-of-the-world" islanders could afford ivory, not iron. But when the same poet tells us that the sword which Odysseus brought from Troy was "a great silver-studded bronze sword" (Odyssey, X. 261, 262), then Mr. Ridgeway does not allow the poet to mean what he says. The poet is now using an epic formula older than the age of iron swords.

That Mr. Ridgeway adopts Helbig's theory—the poet says "bronze," by a survival of the diction of the bronze age, when he means iron—I infer from the following passage: "Chalkos is the name for the older metal, of which cutting weapons were made, and it thus lingered in many phrases of the Epic dialect; 'to smite with the chalkos' was equivalent to our phrase 'to smite with the steel.'" [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, i. 295.] But we certainly do smite with the steel, while the question is, "DID Homer's men smite with the iron?" Homer says not; he does not merely use "an epic phrase" "to smite with the CHALKOS," but he carefully describes swords, spears, and usually arrow-heads as being of bronze (CHALKOS), while axes, adzes, and knives are frequently described by him as of iron.

Mr. Ridgeway has an illustrative argument with some one, who says: "The dress and weapons of the Saxons given in the lay of Beowulf fitted exactly the bronze weapons in England, for they had shields, and spears, and battle-axes, and swords." If you pointed out to him that the Saxon poem spoke of these weapons as made of iron, he would say, "I admit that it is a difficulty, but the resemblances are so many that the discrepancies may be jettisoned." [Footnote: Ridgeway, i. 83, 84.]

Now, if the supposed controversialist were a Homeric critic, he would not admit any difficulty. He would say, "Yes; in Beowulf the weapons are said to be of iron, but that is the work of the Christian remanieur, or bearbeiter, who introduced all the Christian morality into the old heathen lay, and who also, not to puzzle his iron-using audience, changed the bronze into iron weapons."

We may prove anything if we argue, now that the poets retain the tradition of obsolete things, now that they modernise as much as they please. Into this method of reasoning, after duly considering it, I am unable to come with enthusiasm, being wedded to the belief that the poets say what they mean. Were it otherwise, did they not mean what they say, their evidence would be of no value; they might be dealing throughout in terms for things which were unrepresented in their own age. To prove this possible, it would be necessary to adduce convincing and sufficient examples of early national poets who habitually use the terminology of an age long prior to their own in descriptions of objects, customs, and usages. Meanwhile, it is obvious that my whole argument has no archaeological support. We may find "Mycenaean" corslets and greaves, but they are not in cremation burials. No Homeric cairn with Homeric contents has ever been discovered; and if we did find examples of Homeric cairns, it appears, from the poems, that they would very seldom contain the arms of the dead.

Nowhere, again, do we find graves containing bronze swords and iron axes and adzes. I know nothing nearer in discoveries to my supposed age of bronze weapons and iron tools than a grave of the early iron and geometrical ornament age of Crete—a tholos tomb, with a bronze spear-head and a set of iron tools, among others a double axe and a pick of iron. But these were in company with iron swords? To myself the crowning mystery is, what has become of the Homeric tumuli with their contents? One can but say that only within the last thirty years have we found, or, finding, have recognised Mycenaean burial records. As to the badness of the iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable badness of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than Polybius. In the Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Maguusson, chap, xxiv.) we read that Steinthor "was girt with a sword that was cunningly wrought; the hilts were white with silver, and the grip wrapped round with the same, but the strings thereof were gilded." This was a splendid sword, described with the Homeric delight in such things; but the battle-cry arises, and then "the fair- wrought sword bit not when it smote armour, and Steinthor must straighten it under his foot." Messrs. Morris and Maguusson add in a note: "This is a very common experience in Scandinavian weapons, and for the first time heard of at the battle of Aquae Sextiae between Marius and the Teutons." [Footnote: The reference is erroneous.] "In the North weapon- smiths who knew how to forge tempered or steel-laminated weapons were, if not unknown, at least very rare." When such skill was unknown or rare in Homer's time, nothing was more natural than that bronze should hold its own, as the metal for swords and spears, after iron was commonly used for axes and ploughshares.



CHAPTER X

THE HOMERIC HOUSE

If the Homeric poems be, as we maintain, the work of a peculiar age, the Homeric house will also, in all likelihood, be peculiar. It will not be the Hellenic house of classical times. Manifestly the dwelling of a military-prince in the heroic age would be evolved to meet his needs, which were not the needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace the later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also, at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though the ladies freely honour by their presence the hall of the warriors. The circumstances, however, were peculiar— Penelope being unprotected in the absence of her lord.

The whole domestic situation in the Homeric poems—the free equality of the women, the military conditions, the life of the chiefs and retainers—closely resembles, allowing for differences of climate, that of the rich landowners of early Iceland as described in the sagas. There can be no doubt that the house of the Icelandic chief was analogous to the house of the Homeric prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode of life were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though the Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his attention when he did not chance to be on Viking adventure— "bearing bane to alien men." He always carried sword and spear, and often had occasion to use them. He entertained many guests, and needed a large hall and ample sleeping accommodation for strangers and servants. His women were as free and as much respected as the ladies in Homer; and for a husband to slap a wife was to run the risk of her deadly feud. Thus, far away in the frosts of the north, the life of the chief was like that of the Homeric prince, and their houses were alike.

It is our intention to use this parallel in the discussion of the Homeric house. All Icelandic chiefs' houses in the tenth and eleventh centuries were not precisely uniform in structure and accommodation, and saga writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living more comfortably than their forefathers, sometimes confuse matters by introducing the arrangements of their own into the tale of past times. But, in any case, one Icelandic house of the tenth or eleventh century might differ from another in certain details. It is not safe, therefore, to argue that difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses means that the varying descriptions were composed in different ages. In the Odyssey the plot demands that the poet must enter into domestic details much more freely than he ever has occasion to do in the Iliad. He may mention upper chambers freely, for example; it will not follow that in the Iliad upper chambers do not exist because they are only mentioned twice in that Epic.

It is even more important to note that in the house of Odysseus we have an unparalleled domestic situation. The lady of the house is beset by more than a hundred wooers—"sorning" on her, in the old Scots legal phrase—making it impossible for her to inhabit her own hall, and desirable to keep the women as much as possible apart from the men. Thus the Homeric house of which we know most, that of Odysseus, is a house in a most abnormal condition.

For the sake of brevity we omit the old theory that the Homeric house was practically that of historical Greece, with the men's hall approached by a door from the courtyard; while a door at the upper end of the men's hall yields direct access to the quarters where the women dwelt apart, at the rear of the men's hall.

That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the "Plan of the Homeric House." [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. XX, 128-150.] Quite apart from arguments that rest on the ground plans of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr. Myres has proved, by an exact reading of the poet's words, that the descriptions in the Odyssey cannot be made intelligible on the theory that the poet has in his mind a house of the Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on any Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that we must take other Homeric houses into consideration. [Footnote: Homerische Palaste. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.] The prae-Mycenaean house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the Hellenic house of historic days; between these comes the Mycenaean and Homeric house; "so that the Mycenaean house stands out as an intrusive phenomenon, of comparatively late arrival and short of duration..." [Footnote: Myres, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx. p. 149.] Noack goes further; he draws a line between the Mycenaean houses on one hand and the houses described by Homer on the other; while he thinks that the "late Homeric house," that of the closing Books of the Odyssey, is widely sundered from the Homeric house of the Iliad and from the houses of Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the Odyssey. [Footnote: Noack, p. 73.]

In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of a single definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor Hellenic—a fact which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that the house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the later addition of an upper storey, as Noack supposes, and of women's quarters, and of separate sleeping chambers for the heads of the family.

The Iliad, save in two passages, and earlier Books of the Odyssey may not mention upper storeys because they have no occasion, or only rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleeping chambers while others of the same period had not, as we shall prove from the Icelandic parallel.

Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house of Odysseus, is that the women had a meguron, or common hall, apart from that of the men, with other chambers. These did not lie to the direct rear of the men's hall, nor were they entered by a door that opened in the back wall of the men's hall. Penelope has a chamber, in which she sleeps and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber, unoccupied during her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor. The women's rooms are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in the courtyard are chambers. Telemachus has his [Greek: Thalamos], or chamber, in the men's courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's words; and Mr. Myres corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae, a point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as regards Tiryns, while he accepted it for Mycenae. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii. 497; Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx. 136.]

Noack [Footnote: Noack, p. 39.] does not, however, agree.

There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls of Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the hearth, with two tall pillars on each side, supporting a louvre higher than the rest of the roof, and permitting some, at least, of the smoke of the fire to escape. Beside the fire were the seats of the master and mistress of the house, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The place of honour was not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like the high table in college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric house the [Greek: prodomos], or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not identical with the [Greek: aethousa], or portico, though he admits that the two words "are used indifferently to describe the sleeping place of a guest." [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx. 144, 155.] This was the case at Tiryns; and in the house of the father of Phoenix, in the Iliad, the prodomos, or forehouse, and the aethousa, or portico, are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack does not accept the Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.