The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently "archaised." Not only is such archaising inconsistent with the art of an uncritical age, but a careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism at his command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus, author of the _Post Homerica_, in fourteen books. Quintus does his best; but we never observe in him that _naif_ delight in describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver; but of what metal was the blade? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will observe that, though he knows [Greek: chalkos], bronze, as a synonym for weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or arrow-head was of bronze--a point on which Homer constantly insists. When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has no interest in the constitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so attractive to Homer. Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the _ILIAD_ must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit. CHAPTER VII HOMERIC ARMOUR Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the alleged expansions of the _Iliad_ all lived in one and the same period of culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in the _Iliad_ not only large "expansions" of many dates, but also briefer interpolations inserted by the strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf--that is about 540 B.C.--"we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work, were secure from the touch of the latest poet." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. ix.]