Homer and His Age by Andrew Lang

Author:Andrew Lang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ancient history, greek, greeks, greece, poetry, poet, andrew lang, study, homer
ISBN: 9781781666234
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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