This must be the case--if the life drawn is harmonious, the
picture must be the work of a single epoch--for it is not in the
nature of early uncritical times that later poets should adhere,
or even try to adhere, to the minute details of law, custom,
opinion, dress, weapons, houses, and so on, as presented in
earlier lays or sagas on the same set of subjects. Even less are
poets in uncritical times inclined to "archaise," either by
attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners of the past, or
by making researches in graves, or among old votive offerings in
temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The idea of
such archaising is peculiar to modern times. To take an instance
much to the point, Virgil was a learned poet, famous for his
antiquarian erudition, and professedly imitating and borrowing
from Homer. Now, had Virgil worked as a man of to-day would work
on a poem of Trojan times, he would have represented his heroes as
using weapons of bronze. [Footnote: Looking back at my own poem,
_Helen of Troy_ (1883), I find that when the metal of a
weapon is mentioned the metal is bronze.] No such idea of
archaising occurred to the learned Virgil. It is "the iron" that
pierces the head of Remulus (_Aeneid_, IX. 633); it is "the
iron" that waxes warm in the breast of Antiphates (IX. 701).
Virgil's men, again, do not wear the great Homeric shield,
suspended by a baldric: AEneas holds up his buckler
(_clipeus_), borne "on his left arm" (X. 26 i). Homer,
familiar with no buckler worn on the left arm, has no such
description. When the hostile ranks are to be broken, in the
_Aeneid_ it is "with the iron" (X. 372), and so throughout.

The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not
archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model,