Dr. Helbig's argument [Footnote: _La Question Mycénienne_, 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.