The Odyssey: How Bronze Affected Greek History

How Bronze Affected Greek History

According to Don Talpalriu with Softpedia, copper and bronze weapons were found 500 miles from Athens in 2008. In the Odyssey, Telemachus provides evidence on page 55 that there were five main sources of elements to be found in Greece:

My dear friend, can you believe your eyes?

The murmuring hall, how luminous it is

with bronze, gold, amber, silver , and ivory!

This is the way the court of Zeus must be,

inside, upon Olympos. What wonder! (Homer Book 4, lines 77-81)

However, only one of those elements would be strong enough to support the force of another man reigning death among his enemies, thus bronze is the only choice for an infantry weapon. The mining of bronze in Ancient Greece ultimately led to significant

victories for the military via the defenses formed from this element.
The elements mentioned are geographically sporadic all throughout Greece.

For example, gold mines could be found in places like Macedonia while copper mines could found on the islands of Delos or Eretria. Also, it is important to note that bronze is a mix of tin and copper so it can not be mined directly from the earth. These metals were primarily used for the production of arms and currency during this time period. These metals were often found through underground mining, also known as deep vein mining. This type of mining was tedious and could only be done through excavation and tunnel building. These tunnels eventually emptied into galleries where ore was obtained, washed and melted. There was often a “relay of miners carrying ore out on their shoulders” while other times wheeled carts were used. Another type of mining was surface mining where ore surfaced in streams or on the ground and collected. An example of surface mining is placer deposits where streams broke up the ore and the dense pieces would settle at the bottom. The Greeks were very intelligent and could tell the “affinity for one type of metal for another” or would follow the placer deposits to the source. Because of the presence of water previously, sometimes the mine was forced to be abandoned because of the lack of control of the water. The Romans attempted to counteract this by digging drainage adits to divert water and filtering the water by percolation. Slaves would often carry the water away with

baskets of grass or wood. One of the pieces of equipment used to aid in the water problem was the Archimedean Screw. The screw was made up of a wood cylinder and copper insides. It was operated by cranking the cylinder which subsequently rose the water from one end to the other. The other piece of technology was the wheel which was built around an axle and would raise and pour water. It was powered by men walking across. There were many disadvantages of the deep mines with one being the bad air and extreme temperatures “for ever 30 meters deeper, the temperature increased 1-degree Centigrade.” The miners often worked close to or completely naked or “dig parallel shafts so hot air would be replaced by cool air.”
Soldiers were the immediate yield to the outcome of mining. They were supplied with weapons and armor made of bronze. The armor or weapons held depended on the type of soldier. For example, a hoplite wore lighter armor for better mobility and often carried a long spear, a short sword and a shield called a hoplon. The bronze armor was best used for protection against arrows, however; archery was a skill that was eventually lost because of the armor. The Cuirass and the Corinthian were both examples of the new armor made of bronze. Another type of soldier was called the Peltast who carried ranged weapons and little to no armor. These soldiers often wore long brimmed hats and carried javelins, bows, or slingshots.
The Phalanx was “an ancient Greek expression to signify an organized, dense line of battle” and was ultimately precipitated of the weapons and armor of the soldiers yielded from the metals found in the mines. Homer was the first to use this term to define the battle lines in his epics. The mechanics of the phalanx set hoplites out in a free formation of straight lines until it was time to battle which was when the phalanx would close. The amount of personal space was very limited as the hoplons the hoplites carried were often held in the left hand as to shield half of his body and half of his neighbor’s. However, the right side of the phalanx was sometimes the weakest because of the shield alignment. Other times the overall strength of phalanx would be unbalanced so as to trap the opponent. One disadvantage of this strategy was that it only worked on flat ground. For example, in the Battle of Thermopylae, 300 Spartans met the entire Persian army on flat ground and not even the strongest Persian soldier could break down the squadron. This was until arrows rained upon them from the mountains and killed nearly all of the remaining soldiers. The Battle of Marathon changed the mechanics of how the Phalanx was originally used so as to strengthen the idea. Miltiades noticed that the Persian army was so large that they would surround the Greek army and destroy them. He subsequently thickened the outside wings and thinned the middle to prevent this over encumberment. During the Corinthian War, the oblique phalanx was introduced so as to attack one side of the opposing phalanx by aligning the groups of soldiers in a diagonal fashion. The idea of the phalanx was eventually retired when Alexander the Great introduced the elephant into combat which forced troops to subdivide into specific tasks.
In the Odyssey, Telemachus contributes examples of the types of metals that could be found in Ancient Greece.

These metals could be found in the ground and dug up through deep vein mining. This produced the weapons and armor that made up the military which helped formulate different attack plans. Thus, The mining of bronze in Ancient Greece ultimately led to significant victories for the military via the defenses formed from this

element.