424 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. xn. 



material, which was slowly replacing bronze for cutting 

 implements ; and in the Homeric legends the heroes are 

 described as fighting with weapons of bronze and of 

 iron. A lump of iron was among the prizes in the 

 games at the celebration of the funeral of Patroklus. 1 

 In the time of Hesiod, who flourished 400 years before 

 Herodotus, or B.C. 850, it had already superseded bronze 

 among the Greeks, and to him we owe the knowledge 

 that the age of Bronze was as well recognised by his 

 contemporaries as by modern archaeologists. 2 Hesiod 

 and Lucretius distinctly point out that, according to the 

 voice of tradition, the use of bronze disappeared before 

 the spread of the more useful metal ; it long survived 

 for making helmets, shields, and armour, and has been 

 used for purposes of ornament down to the present day. 

 There is no reason to suppose that iron. was first dis- 

 covered in Europe. It is more probable that, like 

 bronze, it was discovered in Asia, and that it was derived 

 from the south. 3 It would spread very rapidly from 

 the old centres of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia, over 

 the Mediterranean area ; and from Greece and Italy it 

 would penetrate to the north and west by the ordinary 

 channels of commerce. When the natives had once 

 learned the art of reducing it from its ores, they would 

 no longer be dependent upon distant sources of supply 

 for the materials for making implements and weapons, 

 as they were in the Bronze age. Iron ores occur in very 

 nearly every country in Europe, and have been worked 

 in very remote times. The supply of iron in Britain, in 



1 Iliad, xxiii. p. 826. 



2 For a criticism on the derivation and use of iron among the Greeks, 

 see Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, pp. 3, 4, 5. 



3 Worsaae, La Colonisation de la Russie et du Nord Scandinavc, Copeii- 

 hugue, 1875, p. 77 et seq. 



