Thanks, I knew iron is tougher but never heard it was cheaper or more available during the time period. I appreciate the info.
The problem wasn’t expense so much as technology. Bronze was the only game in town for mass production, iron was pretty much something that had to be found. Smelting is still pretty old, and fabricated iron has been found in Egyptian Old Kingdom contexts, but it was from meteoritic sources. Bronze in the Med was big biz, although the sources for the components are still not settled. Probably the search for copper and tin drove exploration, but there’s really no way to prove that. Tin was mined in Britain, copper in Cyprus and elsewhere, and the Mycenaean Greeks colonized in Sicily and other spots in the western Med. By the time of the Peloponnesian War hoplite soldiers’ shields were round and bronze, while during the so-called Bronze Age Greek shields were wicker frameworks covered with leather.
The advantage of iron is that iron ore is very abundant. There is flipping iron ore everywhere. Bronze was better but you needed tin to mix with your copper. Tin is relatively rare and (AFAWK) was only mined two places in great abundance, in Briton and around the Black Sea.