[29] _Proceedings British School of Athens_, vol. ix. p. 386, citing the difference of colour, and we may add of decorative design, on the part of the costume above, and the part below the girdle. This difference could not always occur in a dress all of one piece. For example, see the female figures incised on the fragments of a corslet of bronze plates at Olympia (_Bronzen_, plate lix.). But this question is _sub judice_; it is argued that the difference of pattern and colour in upper and lower parts of the dress is a decorative caprice of the artist, and corresponds to nothing that he saw in women's costume. It is impossible to deny that Ariadne in the archaic Corinthian piece of gold-work has come to see the Minotaur killed, wearing her skirt, and leaving her bodice in her bedroom (Roscher's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 3007, fig. 2). [30] _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 200. [31] Cf. _B.S.A._, vol. xii. p. 323, fig. K. CHAPTER X BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS The Aegean civilisation, till its last age of decadence in art, knew nothing about the use of iron for weapons or tools: at least no such relics have been discovered. Homer, on the other hand, is thoroughly familiar with iron as a commodity. A recurrent formula describes wealthy men as rich in gold, bronze, women, and iron.[1] Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides were bartered for wine, at the siege of Troy, when a large trading fleet came in from Lemnos, sent by Euneos, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, a princess of that island.[2] Lemnos seems to have been rich in wine, which provoked the heroes to utter _gabes_ (as in the _Chansons de Geste_) about their future triumphs in the war.[3] Thus iron is abundant, but its uses are strangely restricted. All careful readers must perceive that Homer lives in an age of "overlap." Remains of such ages are common on European sites almost everywhere; the explorer finds in the overlap iron and bronze things together, iron comes gradually in: bronze, for weapons and tools, gradually disappears. Thus at the great prehistoric cemetery of Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps, we find weapons of bronze fitted with iron edges, then swords with iron blades and hilts of bronze, then swords of iron, hilt and blade.[4] In Crete was found a _tholos_ tomb (a domed stone edifice) with a bronze spear-head, a set of iron tools including a double pick and an axe, and a sword of iron. This tomb was of the period when "geometric" ornament on vases had nearly supplanted the Aegean forms of decoration: in fact it was in the period to which we may assign Homer.[5] Other tholos tombs near the same site contained vessels Aegean in _shape_, with geometric _ornament_, and an iron dagger, and bronze fibulae and bracelets, objects for which iron was not used. In a tomb at Muliana in Crete,[6] were found bronze weapons with human remains that had been buried beside iron weapons with cremated bones.[7] The vases were partly of Aegean, partly of Dipylon geometric style.