(6) Mr. Monro renders the speech of Melanthius (xxii. 139-141) in this manner: "Go to, I will bring you gear to arm you from the store-chamber, for the arms are in their place (ἔνδον), I think, and Odysseus and his sons have not put them elsewhere." Melanthius merely means that the armour has not been moved by Odysseus and Telemachus from its natural place, the store-chamber; he will there find what is needed. (7) The passage in Book xxiv. 164-166, where the ghost of Amphimedon tells the story of the removal of the arms to Agamemnon in Hades, is late, like all Book xxiv. It is possibly later than the passage about removing the arms from the hall. Averse as I am to theories of interpolation, the whole passage in which "iron" is made a synonym for "weapon" is rich in the non-Epic manner as well as matter, and causes very un-Homeric confusions. Critics of all shades of opinion recognise this, and I do not object to the line about iron merely because it is as fatal to my theory as it is friendly to that of Mr. Ridgeway.[18] In this case the line contradicts the whole of both Epics, which in itself provokes suspicion; just as a single passage in which cavalry were introduced, or burials by humation were introduced, or armorial bearings on small bucklers appeared, would rightly be deemed a late interpolation. This line apart, the two Epics seem uniform work of a peculiar stage, the Gezer stage, of the overlap of bronze and iron. Hesiod knew all about the Bronze Age, and knew that his was the age of iron, whereas the ancients tooled with bronze, "and there was no black iron." Put Hesiod at 700 B.C., and we wonder why "late poets" about that date gave iron tools but bronze weapons to the Achaeans.[19]