60 IRON AND STEEL. 



foray against "Chadasha" took much booty, including '"iron of the 

 mountain, 40 cubes," I was tempted to think that Jerusalem must 

 have been meant ; but I believe the Chadasha mentioned is under- 

 stood to be a city of the Khetge or Hittites, and not Jerusalem, the 

 Khodesh or sacred city of the Jews and El Khuds of the modern 

 Arabs. 



The dawn of history finds iron in use among the Greeks. One 

 legend, and the most probable, says they derived a knowledge of it 

 from the Phoenicians, while another says that the burning of the for- 

 ests on Mount Ida smelted the iron ore exposed to the flames, and 

 revealed the secret of working in iron. That such could have been 

 the case is next to impossible. 



Homer speaks of iron and weapons of iron and steel — rarely in 

 the Iliad, frequently in the Odyssey. I leave the Wolfian and other 

 Homeric scholars to decide whether any particular significance at- 

 taches to the fact. Nor will I pretend to say whether or not Homer 

 had historic knowledge enabling him to decide that iron implements 

 and weapons were used during the siege of Troy, say about 1,200 

 years before our era, or whether he simply supposed conditions sim- 

 ilar to those he saw around him to have existed in the days of which 

 he wrote, just as Shakespeare supposed cannon to have been used in 

 the days when the Danes governed England. Homer mentions 

 axes of steel. Gladstone in his Homeric Synchronisms, says : " Iron 

 is, in Homer, exceedingly rare and precious. He mentions nothing 

 massive that is made of this material." Among the prizes offered at 

 the funeral games of Patroclus is " a mass of shapeless iron fresh 

 from the forge," and Achilles says : 



Stand forth, whoever will contend for this ; 

 And, if hroad fields and rich be his, the mass, 

 Will last him many years. The man who tends 

 His flocks or guides his plow need not be sent 

 To town for iron ; he will have it here. 



We may infer from this that iron was very valuable, for the mass 

 in question was no more than a man might lift ; and that it was used 

 in agriculture before it was utilized for the manufacture of arms or 

 armor. 



As early as 700 years before Christ the iron ores of Elba were 

 worked by the Greeks, who called the island Ethalia, " from the 

 blazes of the ironworks." Strabo says that at the beginning of our 



