Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military contests in bowmanship, are _un sujet à 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 à 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 à 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.