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.), accompaniedby an early typeof bronzedagger, while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in the Balkan peninsula at Glassinavз. {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 sauroterwas 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 Iliadwas put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metaclass="underline" the Iliadis a military poem, while the Odysseyis an epic of peace; consequently the Iliadis much more copious in references to bronze than the Odysseyhas 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 onereference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also proposed to leave six references to iron in the Iliadout 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 implementsthan 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 misйricorde), 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 tholosof 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 implementsmay 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.