Homer,
Odyssey 16.294 = 19.13 (tr. A.T. Murray):
For of itself does the iron draw a man to it.
αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἄνδρα σίδηρος.
Joseph Russo on 19.13:
apparently a proverb, used here to add persuasiveness by an appeal to
traditional wisdom (cf. note to xvii 347, where an apparent proverb also
closes a speech). Although meant as a warning against the temptation to
resort to weapons in a drunken quarrel—a common danger in heroic
societies—this proverb may have older origins in an awareness of the
magnetic, and hence magical, properties of iron. So M. Cary and A.D.
Nock, CQ xxi (1927), 125-6. And perhaps the early availability of meteoric
iron contributed to this belief: G.A. Wainwright, Antiquity x (1936), 6:
‘Iron was the thunderbolt, one of the most appalling powers in Nature’.
The use of ‘iron’ as the word for an unspecified weapon, instead of the
more normal ‘bronze’ (cf. xi 120, xix 522, xx 315, and throughout the fight
in xxii), is criticized by Lorimer, Monuments, 510, as ‘an unexampled
breach of epic convention’ (but see 119-20 for what she admits are ‘partial
exceptions’), but this is hardly an adequate reason for doubting the line’s
authenticity.