The Heart of Steel: a Metallurgical Interpretation of Iron in Homer

The Iliad and the Odyssey co-evolved with the use of iron, and so a detailed examination of iron in the Homeric poems has the potential to flesh out a “fuller cultural history” (1) of the Greeks: what they considered the properties of iron objects, and how iron acquires these properties. I believe the texts distinguish three types of iron: bloom iron, wrought iron, and steel, despite the fact that most translations simply use the English word “iron” for all three, and thus render anemic both our appreciation for ancient Greek culture and the poetic richness of the texts themselves. This paper is an attempt to fortify both.