[40] Especially the scene of the death of Hector in the twenty-second book of the Iliad. Achilles having driven all the Trojans except Hector within their walls, pursued Hector thrice round the city, in the sight of the Trojans on the walls and of the host of the Greeks assembled on the plain outside the city. If any part of the city had been outside the wall, it must have been mentioned as impeding or aiding the flight of Hector, or as having been captured by the Greeks. As it is, the poet has no landmark outside the city to show how far the chase had extended except a fountain where the two springs, one hot and one cold, of the Scamander, had been built round with stone platforms on which clothing was washed by the Trojan women. There are numberless passages in the Iliad and Odyssey which prove that the houses of the heroes were well stored with wealth. The suitors who intruded as guests at the house of Telemachus always found plenty of cattle, bread, wine and oil ready at hand for their riotous feasts, and yet Telemachus was but a poor man among the Greek princes. When Telemachus paid a visit to Menelaus and Helen at Sparta he was astonished to find that their palace glittered with gold and silver, with electrum (a mixture of two metals) and with ivory[41]. The chamber of Odysseus at Ithaca contained abundance of gold and bronze, and clothing in chests and sweet smelling oil and wine in jars against his return[42]. The metal used for weapons was brass or bronze: agricultural implements were chiefly made of iron: of the precious metals gold was more commonly used than silver[43]. We do not hear that any of these metals were obtained in the heroic age from the soil of Greece itself, and may fairly conjecture that they were brought to the Greeks by the Phœnicians who in that age were more active in trade than any other people[44]. [41] _Odyssey_ IV. 68-75. [42] _Odyssey_ II. 337-343. [43] The evidence concerning the use of the metals is collected by Grote, octavo edition vol. I. p. 493, cabinet edition vol. II. pp. 104, 105. [44] For the dealings of the Phœnicians see the story in which Eumæus the swineherd narrates how he was kidnapped as a child by Phœnician traders. _Odyssey_ XV. 403-484.