DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0242
216 CRETE AND THE HOMERIC POEMS
On the evolution theory, on the other hand, these
graves are a real help. It is unlikely that weapons
would be invariably called bronze in a transitional age,
when iron was becoming common. The use is too uni-
form for Professor Ridgeway's explanation to hold good.
His analogy of the use of Chalkeus and Chalkeion for
blacksmith and smithy in later Greek 1 is not a sound
one. They are used as fixed names, just as we talk
of an " ironmonger." We do not, all the same, talk of
buying " iron " kettles when we mean copper ones ;
nor would the Greeks have talked of the objects made
by the Chalkeus as bronze, unless they were so in point
of fact. An epithet is different from what is practically
a proper name. The real analogy is the occasional use
of Chalkos for a sword or spear in later poetry. We
agree that such a survival is natural ; but if it has no
basis in actual life, it is bound to be sporadic, and not
universal. It is impossible to believe that in every
passage except one a poet would have always talked of
bronze when in point of fact he meant iron. On the
other hand, if the word " bronze " was once used in a great
mass of poetry at a time when it represented the actual
facts, it was possible for the younger generation of poets
not only to leave unaltered what they had inherited,
but to create the new on the model of the old. Until
the discovery, however, of the East Cretan tombs, there
was always the difficulty in this view that it seemed to
demand, what was out of the question at so early an
age,! something like conscious archaising; Professor
Ridgeway's principle of linguistic survival would account
for much, but it would hardly account for the younger
poets' almost complete success in running on the old
lines. If, however, these later poets wrote in days when
iron weapons had not yet completely supplanted bronze,
they would see nothing odd in their predecessors' lan-
1 E.A.GA. p. 295.
2 As is well shown by Lang, H.A. passim.
On the evolution theory, on the other hand, these
graves are a real help. It is unlikely that weapons
would be invariably called bronze in a transitional age,
when iron was becoming common. The use is too uni-
form for Professor Ridgeway's explanation to hold good.
His analogy of the use of Chalkeus and Chalkeion for
blacksmith and smithy in later Greek 1 is not a sound
one. They are used as fixed names, just as we talk
of an " ironmonger." We do not, all the same, talk of
buying " iron " kettles when we mean copper ones ;
nor would the Greeks have talked of the objects made
by the Chalkeus as bronze, unless they were so in point
of fact. An epithet is different from what is practically
a proper name. The real analogy is the occasional use
of Chalkos for a sword or spear in later poetry. We
agree that such a survival is natural ; but if it has no
basis in actual life, it is bound to be sporadic, and not
universal. It is impossible to believe that in every
passage except one a poet would have always talked of
bronze when in point of fact he meant iron. On the
other hand, if the word " bronze " was once used in a great
mass of poetry at a time when it represented the actual
facts, it was possible for the younger generation of poets
not only to leave unaltered what they had inherited,
but to create the new on the model of the old. Until
the discovery, however, of the East Cretan tombs, there
was always the difficulty in this view that it seemed to
demand, what was out of the question at so early an
age,! something like conscious archaising; Professor
Ridgeway's principle of linguistic survival would account
for much, but it would hardly account for the younger
poets' almost complete success in running on the old
lines. If, however, these later poets wrote in days when
iron weapons had not yet completely supplanted bronze,
they would see nothing odd in their predecessors' lan-
1 E.A.GA. p. 295.
2 As is well shown by Lang, H.A. passim.