The World of Homer

when men wore smocks or chitons, like the Greeks of the historic ages. In war, on this theory, they wore no armour save the huge body-covering shields of Aegean art, but not the loin-cloth or the bathing-drawers which were the sol

een accepted, the huge early shield, slung by a baldric, was discarded for the round or oval parrying buckler, blazoned with a device, and carried on the left arm. The smock or chiton c

which clasped in front and back. Thirdly, the Ionian armour of the eighth, seventh, and early sixth centuries was not Homeric. Men wore, not hauberks of mail, clasping at front and back, but corslets with breast-plate and back-plate fastened at the sides; with these they wore neither mailed belt nor mailed kirtle. They wore not only greaves, but

o the Aegean loin-cloth or drawers, or he wore a very tight curt jerkin, coming down no lower than the buttocks. It was when the mailed hauberk, m

ld on the left arm: the Homeric body-covering shield hung by a baldric retained its place. Women, too, I am to argue, reverted on occasion to the Aegean tight bodice, small waist and skirt, or wore a chiton tight, c

e are told it was, while the un-Homeric featur

eld, or to chitons as represented anywhere except perhaps in the Warrior Vase (sub-Mycen?an) of Mycenae. No brooches are mentioned as fastening chitons, and it rather appears that these resembled the very short-sleeved, rather loose, and not girdled sewn smock of the lowest figure in the Mycenaean "siege vase." Eumaeus the swi

s, and bright as the sun," it is not quite clear whether it was as tight, or as bright, as the oni

oth or pair of tight fitting bathing-drawers."[3] This is the usual pre-Achaean dress of men in Minoan art. In archaic Greek art, men often wear either a very tight jerkin, covering the trunk, or, "on the earliest vases," the men have reverted from the Homeric chiton to the Aegean loin-cloth and bathing-drawers. Either this is the case, or the men, in fact, never wore the chiton in the "earlie

to Athene-B.F. Arc

rs, or jerkin, reaching from the shoulders to just below the buttocks-was call

in art we find it represented from the eighth to the sixth century.[4] Such a dress, with a very broad belt, is a male

d archaic Greek art. In some cases it does not suffice for decency. This is not the Homeric chiton, especially if that reached to the feet, and needed to

rds the Aegean costume, the bathing-drawers, or even loin-cloth; or more usually became the short tight jersey, covering the trunk and the upper part of the thigh. This is a natural reversion. The Achaean invaders from the colder north had practically worn smock and plaid, chiton and chlaina. In the warme

t of the Iliad and Odyssey; though, in fact, they saw only old men, or men on formal occasions, wearing the chiton. Or th

be girdled up for active work; and that the word and the thing itself survived in the poems throug

in was represented to the life a hound catching a fawn.[6] This chlaina was red in colour and was double-folded. The great overgarment, t

ith Lion-Hunters

ss was not the free-flowing costume which Homer describes, and which the appearance of safety pins,

e costume, is in essence, we shall show, that of the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. with the exception of the shield,-a huge body-covering shield in Homer (a shield probably of various shapes, circular, oblong, cylindrical or like a figure of 8),[7] suspended by a baldric (see fig. 2),-while in the seventh to fifth centuries we find

the fifth centuries, such hauberks as Homer describes; they have variegated patterns of bronze scales;

affairs, mainly illustrating the Little Iliad, an Ionian cyclic poem attributed to Lesches. Among the pictures, says Pausanias, was represented an altar, and on it was a "bronze corslet, such as was worn of old, for now we seldom see them. It consisted of two pieces called guala, one to cover breast and belly, the other for the back, fastened by clasps." Unconsciously anticipating Reichel, Pausanias says that this piece of armour would be protection enough, "without a shield," as if a shield could simultaneously protect both back and front. "And so Homer represents Phorcys the Phrygian without a shield,"[9] "because he wore this kind of corslet."[10] Homer says that the spear of Aias burst the gualon of Phorcys, and the bronze let out the entrails.[11] The shield of Phorcys, if

thian Vase: M

scales, and mailed flaps; but the set of fashion is away from the plain plate corslet fastened at the sides, to the decorative hauberk

mour in place of the back-plate and breast-plate, is unknown; probably it was borrowed from the late Assyrian hauberk of scales, of which many examples occur in Layard's Monuments. Judging from the later black figure vases, the process was gradual; some warriors wear the old back-plate, breast-plate, an

ack figure vases, he wears the fluttering tails of his flowing Homeric chiton under his mailed kirtle. Thus the dress of men, in Homer, and the

, as Ionian interpolations of the seventh century. We shall show that the back-plate and breast-plate of the seventh century are not the hauberk, clasping down the middle, of some passages in Homer; and that the jutting bronze rim of the seventh century is not the mitrê of Homer. Thus, if there were late interpol

y foundations. He supposed that in the oldest parts of the Epics men fought in battle as six or seven men, in Aegean art, fight in chance encounters (that is, almost naked, or with shields which co

th to fifth centuries, in Greece; and even plate corslets are extremely rare. In Reichel's second edition, which he, unfortunately, left incomplete at his regretted death, "he contemplated an important change

ae-Ionic corslet," no hauberk but a cuirass of pla

actual existence, to our knowledge? Only fragments of one, as far as I am aware, and that one is not "Ionic," it was found at Olympia, and is "archaic." The fragments are of bronze plate, with decorations in th

sed in war by races with small shields, and the great shield is worn by Aias and Odysseus who had no chariots.) Next, says Reichel, parrying bucklers coming in as early as the archaic art (say 700-620 B.C.), big shields went out, and for protection the corsl

and body armour. Their warriors should also have worn the contemporary tight fleshings, with the cypassis, and parameridia, cuisses, tight thigh pieces (the "taslets" of 1640 A.D.). That did not happen; Homer knows no thigh pieces or parameridia, so common

being stripped of them or is stripping others, always called τ?υχεα in the plural? Aias is not explicitly said to have a corslet, but the space of time occupied by his arming he asks the Achaeans to devote to prayer to Zeus. "So said they, while Aias arrayed him in flashing bronze. And when h

hich they always, when they can, strip from a fallen foe. Thus, before the duel between Paris and Menelaus, the men-at-arms dismount, take off their armour, and lay it on the ground.[20] T

seventh century, (corslets not uniformly to be found in Homer), to satisfy the practical warriors who wore it. Yet, in doing so, the poets made incoherent nonsense. As Miss Stawell writes, "a warlike audience, versed in the use of the corslet, insisted on its introduction in the po

ral sense of arming, both in Iliad and Odyssey, though in the latter no corslet is specifically named. It would have been as easy to coin a verb for ar

slets in archaic Greek art of the eighth to early sixth centuries, as shown in art. At most they were etched with designs of men and women, as in the example from Olympia, or hav

Seal-impression

ions which have been found at Haghia Triada in Crete.[24] The seals, it has been said, show a man in what Dr. Halbherr recognises as a heavy decorated plate corslet, with an obviously metallic belt, and below it a mailed kilt or apron, the Homeric mitrê. Dr. Mackenzie, too,

, while his head is in profile (fig. 5). This is common in archaic Greek art. The arms of the man on the seal are not shown, just as the arms of women on some Laconian figurines are omitted.[26] There also occurs on the vase of Haghia Triada, a jovial figure in a v

eek art, is to glance at Engelmann and Anderson's Pictorial Atlas of Iliad and Odyssey, 1895. It is pr

armour is of a sort more common by far in red figure vases. The corslet of a warrior has broad shoulder pieces, and is decorated with three stars, like "the decorated starry corslet" of A

what appear to be long tight-fitting chitons. In "Carving Meat" the cook and his servant wear the tight cypassis (fig. 51). In three combats (figs. 63, 64, 65) the warriors wear the cypassis, or are naked (65), but

is no mailed kirtle and belt. In the "Death of Achilles" (fig. 14) we have the plain corslet over the cyp

and Hector fight

ng from Cam

in plate corslet fastened at the sides, and the cypassis; and the less they favour the

ted hauberk of mail, clasping in front, and having broad shoulder plates coming over from behind and fastened in front; with the plated fl

uge shield with baldric was left unchanged. Meanwhile, as the tight cypassis scarcely reaching below the buttocks is the usual warrior's costume of the seventh to early or mid-sixth century, the loose chiton, like the variegated hauberk,-the chiton being "a l

ostume answer closely to Homeric descriptions-have not been observed either by Reichel or his English following. Nor do they notice that the thigh pieces of seventh to sixth century art never occur in

ely draw blood. "Her own hand guided it where the golden buckles of the belt were clasped and the doubled breast-plate met them. So the bitter arrow lighted (?πεσε) upon the firm belt; through the inwrought (δαιδαλ?οιο) belt it sped, and th

new (νε?ρον, Iliad, iv. 151). When the arrow is extracted (line 216) the corslet is not mentioned, as I suppose because the arrow passed thr

-Warrio

Vase, Vie

ng his variegated hauberk of scales, or small plates, in front, above his mailed kirtle, or flaps; below which floats the lower part of his chiton; the shoulder-plates of his corslet are still unclasped, and stand up behind

if it be a dropping arrow, (3) his mailed flaps or kirtle, exactly as in the case of Menelaus.[32] Nothing of this kind could occur with the plain plate corslets of the seventh to sixth centuries, which laced at the sides, and had no mailed kirtle or flaps, and no belt or zoster. Thus Homer's armour, in this passage, is precisely

r, he also preserved the primitive arrow, and the political and geographical conditions prior

preceding the Persian wars and later-Greece reverted to the Homeric types or men's dress and body armour, while the Homeric shield was never revived. It was invented as an umbrella against

rk came in, a mere jascran, it is not easy to conjecture; but probably the hauberk was adapted from Assyrian and Egyptian armour

Pouring out W

inting by Dur

cs. But if they say this, must they not apply the same argument to Homeric costume, loose and free flowing? Was that attire also interpolated into the poems at the date wh

g out of date, I have not appealed to their evidence as to costume and armour, but have relied on other vases,-on a vase from Sparta

ther hand, the epithets of the corslet commonly used, ποικ?λο?, πανα?ολο?, πολυδα?δαλο?, suit the hauberk, not the plain back-plate and breast-plate, as may be seen by looking at both kinds of armour as illustrated on countless

O

plates. Again, Champlain (Les Voyages de M. de Champlain, Paris, 1620; Dix's Champlain, p. 113, New York, 1903; Laverdière's Champlain, vol. iv., 1870, opposite p. 85) shows Algonquins with shields cylindrical and covering the body from neck to feet, while both Champlain and modern

et is thus historically valueless, though "the ancient Celts used no

l Europe. Down to 1424, the fighting man in full body armour used large shields in attacking fortified positio

the shield); Odyssey,

ssey, x

y of Ancient Potter

ichte der altgriechischen

, Monuments, i

y, cxix, 2

he dagger from a tomb in

British Museum Ge

d, xvii.

usanias

, Iliad, xii

nn, Tiryns, p

Waffen, 2nd edit

Iliad, vol.

nze plate corslet, with engraved des

his chapter, "Shie

G. E.

d, vol. i

209. Mr. Leaf's tran

ad, iii.

ii. 13

absence of specific mention of corslets in the Odyssey generally as a proof of his theory that "the Odyssey has been altogether less worked over, expurgated, and modernised than what books still persist in calling without qualification 'the older poem'" (R. G. E. pp. 145, 146). Here he has to discover why the Odyssey, according to critics, has (in his view) been "worked over and modernised" as regards the house and the bride-price, while in a few f

and the Ili

ichi, vol. xiii.,

vol. xii. p. op

vol. xiv.,

i, Mon. Ant.,

"soft and very baggy like a Minoan cope." As at that time I had never consciously heard of this famous "Minoan cope," I never dreamed of such a thing as "soft and very baggy" arm

e two central are holding a wreath over a bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may

iad, xv

ol. i. p. 580, citi

(1645) were thigh pieces (cuisses), as

of Miss Stawell's Homer and the Iliad. In pp. 2

ad, iv.

We really cannot expect to understand every detail with certainty, while we have no actual examples of the corslets and shields of many early centuries before our eyes. Mr. Ridgeway believes the body armour of the Achaeans to have been hauberks of bronze scales or small plates, not back-and breast-plates as in seventh and early sixth century art. He illustrates by many bronze studs found at Koracev and Ilijak in Bosnia, of the Glasinatz epoch (Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 435, 436

rontis

A., vol. xi

d'Arbois de Jubainville, La Civilisation des Celtes