Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword brake at the hilt." [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVI. 339.] The sword of Menelaus broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of Paris. [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 349, 380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze. [Footnote: _Iliad_ (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby. The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and, in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once against a lion, once over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and once at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not follow from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword could be used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many thrusts as strokes with the bronze sword in the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Twenty-four cuts to eleven lunges, in the _Iliad_.] As the poet constantly dwells on the "long edge" of the _bronze_ swords and makes heroes use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords were of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton (1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the point against Cumberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.