Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not of iron. [Footnote: Ancient _Bronze Implements_, p. 8 (1881), citing Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. _Iliad_, III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.] Sir John remarks that "for a considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows." Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and _Odyssey_, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote: _Scutum Herculis_, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600 B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears. [Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing. These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M. Berard's book, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee_ (Paris, 1902). M. Berard has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard, perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword straight...." [Footnote: Berard, i. 435.] So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius. On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters' axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led, on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used by sword-smiths. The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. [Footnote: _Grundfrager des Homerkritik,_ pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.] I do not, however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:--