Prehistoric times : as illustrated by ancient remains and the manners and customs of modern savages / by the late Lord Avebury.

  • John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Prehistoric times : as illustrated by ancient remains and the manners and customs of modern savages / by the late Lord Avebury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ANCIENT ALLUSIONS TO BRONZE Hesiod, who is supposed to have written about 900 b.c., and who is the earliest European author whose works have come down to us, appears to have lived soon after the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age, He distinctly states that iron was discovered later than copper and tin. Speaking of those who were ancient, even in his day, he says that they used bronze, and not iron. TO?? S' 7]V ^dX/cea fiev red^ea, ^aX/fw S' eipyd^ovTO jiieXa^ S' ■^dXKcoi Se re oIkoi ovK ecTKe crlStjpog, It is also significant that the word ;)(aX/cei;eij/, from ;(aX/co9, bronze, means to work in metal. Moreover, the forms of early weapons indicate that those of iron were copied from bronze, not those of bronze from iron. Hesiod’s poems, as well as those of Homer, show that more than three thousand years ago the value of iron was known and appreciated. It is true that, as we read in Dr Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities^ bronze “ is represented in the Iliad and Odyssey as the common material of arms, instruments, and vessels of various sorts ; the latter (iron) is mentioned much more rarely.” While, however, the above statement is strictly correct, we must remember that among the Greeks the word iron (atSrjpo?') was used, even In the time of Homer, as synony- mous with a sword, and that steel also appears to have been known to them under the name of d^d^ia?, and perhaps also of Kvavo<s^ as early as the time of Hesiod. We may, there- fore, consider that the Trojan war took place'during the period of transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. In the Pentateuch, excluding Deuteronomy, bronze, or, as it is unfortunately translated, brass, is mentioned thirty-eight times, and iron only four times. Lucretius distinctly mentions the three ages. He says :— “ Arma antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami, Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta, Sed prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus.” ^ * V. 1282.
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