The metals chiefly employed in Homeric verse to typify abstract qualities are bronze and iron. The Shakespearian use of ‘golden’ to convey delightfulness of almost any kind, as in the expressions ‘_golden_ cadence of poesy,’ ‘a _golden_ mind,’ ‘_golden_ joys,’ ‘_golden_ sleep,’ and so on, is paralleled only by the Homeric ‘_golden_ Aphrodite.’ Lead does not exemplify, with the Greek poet, heaviness and sloth, nor silver the gentle ripple of sweet sounds. But death, as ‘a sleep of bronze,’ comes before us in all its unrelenting sternness; Stentor has a ‘voice of bronze;’ a ‘memory of bronze’ was needed for exceptional feats of recitation; and the ‘iron noise’ of battle went up to a ‘bronzen sky’ during the struggle ensuing upon the fall of Patroclus. In the Odyssey, the sky is alternately of bronze and of iron, the same idea of stability—of a ‘brave, o’erhanging firmament’ being conveyed by both epithets.[362] Moreover, iron is there the recognised symbol of pitilessness, strength of mind, and self-command. Odysseus listens, masked in an ‘aspect of iron,’ while Penelope, strangely touched by his still unrecognised presence, recites the weary story of her sorrows. A heart _steeled_—as we should say—against pity was said to be ‘of iron,’ as was that of Achilles against Hector in the days of his ‘iron indignation’ at the slaying of his loved comrade; and silence and secrecy, even in a woman, were represented by the rigidity of that unbending metal. Such metaphors occur, it is true, more frequently in the Odyssey than in the Iliad; but the conception upon which they are founded is present throughout the whole sphere of Homeric thought. There are, nevertheless, as we have seen, clearly definable differences, in the matter of metallic acquisitions, between the two great Epics. The Iliad knows six, while the Odyssey refers only to four of these substances, tin and lead not chancing to be noticed in its cantos; and iron, in their record, has made a considerable advance upon its Iliadic status. This is unquestionably a circumstance to be taken into account in attempting to deal with the Homeric problem. Footnote 362: Hayman’s _Odyssey_, vol. i. p. 63. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X. HOMERIC METALLURGY.