The weight hurled at the games of Patroclus was no stone but an unwrought metal of mass, probably the contents of one of the open-hearth furnaces of the Mediterranean world. This “pig of iron,” which had been taken by Achilles from Eetion of Thebes, is not only the weight to be thrown but the prize, and contrary to the courteous Achaean custom the only prize, although there are four competitors. “The winner’s shepherd, or ploughman,” says Achilles, “will not want for iron for five years.” But in spite of its weight Polypoetes hurls it as far as a herdsman flings the _bola_[21] “when it flieth whirling through the herds of kine.” The word _solos_ occurs only in this passage and in later imitators of Homer; the passage is, as has been said, a very late one, so late that the writer seems to be consciously archaizing, and I believe that, wishing to give the description a primitive appearance, he substituted the solos for the athlete’s diskos, with which he was undoubtedly familiar. The word seems to be connected with the Semitic _sela_, a rock, but at an early date to have been used to describe the pigs of iron produced on the island of Elba and elsewhere. In late writers it is sometimes a poetical synonym for the diskos. The chariot-race and the strictly athletic events, such as boxing, wrestling, and running, were essentially the sports of the nobles; but though the latter excelled the common soldiery in throwing the spear, heaving the weight, and shooting with the bow, as they did in everything else, there is in these three events a distinctly popular element. The bow, the javelin, and the stone were the weapons of all alike, and so, when Achilles was sulking in his tent, his folk, we read, “sported with diskos, with casting of spears, and archery.” The diskos and the spear were also the favourite recreation of the suitors of Penelope, who had, we may suppose, no taste for more strenuous exercises. Their popular character is clearly indicated by the use of the terms “a diskos throw” or “a spear throw” as measures of distance.[22]