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.]