Homer and His Age

Iliad all lived in one and the same period of culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in the Iliad not only large “expansions”

re that any details, even of the oldest work, we

ich the Epic poet dared not intentionally sap. . . . ” 100 We now find 101 that “the latest poet” saps as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C. Moreover, in the m

to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly. That the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual custom and us

chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy shield; that chariots were no longer used; th

nceive of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is Reichel’s secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain examp

Sh

Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze, and of bronze is the corslet. No sh

e descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they vary? and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variation

nce of representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all

rs a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the

d, XX. 273–281). But the passage is not unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet [Greek: eukuklykos], “of good circle,” is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was “made of circular plates.” 105 As for the shield

intolerably heavy and superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are not circles, but rather

sly rendered “circular,” “of good circle,” and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean representati

to cover the whole body of a man. . . . In descriptions the round shape is always implied.” The words which indicated that the shield (or one shield) “really looked like a tower, and really reached from neck to ankles” (in two or three cases), were “received by the poet from the earlier Ac

r “circular.” Homer, it is supposed, in practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700

and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields but round shields, now writes (1900), “The small circular shield of later times

n, he does not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later parts of his Epic wer

art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these, they say, must have been introduced by poets accustomed, in a much later age, to seeing cir

, or like a door; others were circular; and these scholars presume that Homer meant “circular” when he said “circular.” Neither school will convert the other, and we cannot decide between them. W

es, and “covering the body of a man about.” Whether he was also familiar with smaller shields of various types is uncertain; he does not explicitly say that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor does h

ed low would be protected entirely by a Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this passage. On a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B, 325) the entire body of a crouching warrior is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and with échancrures in the sides. The same remark applies to Iliad, XXII. 273–275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he crouches, and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an “old Mycenaean” do

ed, as Reichel 110 maintains that a man could not walk under shield, or only for a short way; wherefore the war chariot was invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from point to point (Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates these points: “Why did not the Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could carry such a s

e comrades of Diomede had the shield ([Greek: aspis], Iliad, X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted bowman, were shield-bearers ([Greek: aspistaon laon], Iliad, IV. 90), and some of them held their shields ([Gr

jecture of Reichel are con

ans, who fought from chariots, carried small shields of various forms, as in the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed with spears, and the bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with arrows from their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who have no bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance. 112. Egyptian

hilles, under shield, sprints thrice round the whole circumference of Troy? Helbig notices several other cases of long runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong, when he said that the huge shield made the use of the war chariot necessary, or the poet is “late”; he is a man who never saw a large shield like Hector’s,

because both men come from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the battle with the Wooers in the Odyssey; yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no chariot.

tion; but the poet only describes his shield: his “towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the b

ich covered the body from chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a local hero of great inf

and chiton, but Hector had doubled himself up laterally ([Greek: eklinthae], VII. 254), and was not wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his neck; Hector replied with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the

d with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus

ing from his chariot (as in this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield. The ancient Irish romances tell of a gae bulg, a spear held in the warrior’s toes, and j

ut we do not think that early poets in an uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is aware that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some hav

was: “it reached to his feet.” This accident of tripping occurred to Periphetes of Myce

ld fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus), he

e Vase of A

on. This is “the vase of Aristonothos,” signed by that painter, and supposed to be of the seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley is being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has re

ver mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with the Phaeacian presents; h

the expansionists lived in one, and that a most peculiar ringless age. This view suits our argument to a wish, but it is not credible that rings and seals and engraved stones, so very common in Mycenaean and later times, should have vanished wholly in the Homeric time. The poet never mentions them, ju

cause he mentions none; but armorial blazons on shield

en fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel were not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted to draw what he see

ose to assume that the men in the galley were left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire being to display the blazons of both parties. 120 We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both “reached to the feet” and were circular,

shield in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may have meant large circular shields. On the Dodwell pyxi

s own verve, or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of exertions beyond those of the poet’s contemporaries, as he often tells us that, in fact, the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific military writer; and in the epic poetry of all other early races very gross exaggeration is permitted, as in the Chansons de Geste, th

e, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenzean huge shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this passage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526–530, an obscure text in which it is uncertain whether

374) does not prove the shield to be small; the shi

rm; that they were made of layers of hide, plated with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall, doubtless oblong, “like a tower,” possib

ous picture of war from a very ancient date of large shields, or late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the ques

dy-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew, and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and greaves. The theory of critics is that late poets introduced the bronze corslets and greaves with which they were familiar in

at least, of the Mycenaean age”— which we are the last to deny. “Is it that the poets are deliberately trying to present the conditions of an age anterior to their own? or are they depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded — circumstances w

“depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded.” But as huge man-covering shields are not among the circumstances by which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why do they depict them? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument departs from the statement that only one theory is “conceivable,” namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, an

s the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest strata, so far as we can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates thorex ‘shield.’” 129 Mr. Leaf’s statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter was delivering an ancient lay he did not introduce any of the military gear — light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets — with

rvatively tenacious” in clinging to chariots, weapons of bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while they have also been “vivid and actual” and “up to date” in the way of introducing everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour unknown, by the theory, in “the old material which is the substance of their song.” By the way, they ha

arable from theories of expansion through several centuries. “Many a method,” says Mr. Leaf, “has been proposed which, up to a certain point, seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which returned to plague the inventor.” 131 This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts from the hypothesis that the poems are t

ned on some other theory. If the poet, again, as others suppose — Mr. Ridgeway for one — knew such bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as extending from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields are not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter? 132 Such a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2 ozs., 133 and a strong man m

ogy of t

from their shape, as represented in works of Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig. 2) with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbr

gger with

ss. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one, in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short, these little objects are representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the “schematised”

e shields, if we believe the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which speed of foot is desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty. The shield then was hung over one side, and running was not so very difficult as if it hung over back or front (cf. Fig. 5). The shields sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the ca

gs: Swords

nders; several of these are represented on engraved Mycenaean ring stones

th its fringes half down the thigh. The shield is circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is infantile. Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least, from neck to shin. 141 They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets. On a Mycenaean painted stele, apparently of th

ircular shield reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures in which Mr. Arthur Evans finds “a most valuable il

r a reason to be given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the invention of late poets living in a

of the great Mycenaean shields which, by Homer’s time

gments of W

he arrow-head is usually of bronze. 144 No man going into battle naked, without body armour, like the Mycenaeans (if they had none), could protect himself with a small shield, or even with a round buckler of twenty-six inches in diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand, where man singled out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the warriors had body armour, or even when they had not, a small shield sufficed; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the

e oblong and rounded at the top, much like that of Achilles 145 in Mr. Leaf’s restoration? The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in shape and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo hide, 146 good against stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked, like the unshielded archers on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The description of the Algonquin shi

y says that “no Achaean warrior employs the bow for war.” 149 Teucer, frequently, and Meriones use the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they resort to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in Iliad, Book X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones w

agment of

rokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by the Scots in the old wars

t him with arrows,” which he took unconcernedly. Teucer shoots nine men in Iliad, VIII. 297–304. In XI. 85 the shafts ([Greek: belea]) showered and the common soldiers fell —[Greek: belea] being arrows as well as thrown spears. 152 Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely, they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is wounded by an arrow. Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in his thigh — archer unknown. 153 Meriones, though an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body of Harpalion (XIII. 650). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as “bowmen” (XIV. 479).

finger — an ineffectual release. 154 The archers in early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old England; the bow is usually small — a child’s weapon

Algonqui

s de Champlain, vol. iv

the Algonquins; (2) the same shields strengthened with metal, light body armour-thin corslets — and archery is frequent, but somewhat despised (the Homeric

nces of obsidian still occur.” In 1895 Dr. Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in each bundle, in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt say, “In the Acropolis graves at Mycenae . . . the spear-heads were but few . . . arrow-heads, on the contrary, are comparatively abundant.” They infer that “picked men used shield and spear; the rank and file doubtless fought simply with bow and sling.” 156. The great Mycenaean shield was obviously evolved as a defence against arrows and sling-stones flying too freel

al breastplate; “the shield” covers the wearer in a way which makes a breastplate an useless encumbrance; or rather, it i

in addition to very large shields, wore ponderous hauberks or byrnies, as we shall prove presently. As this combination of great shield with corslet was common and natural, we cannot agree with Mr. Leaf when he says, “it follows that the Homeric war

ets superfluous when men

oets, who knew only small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but always spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did introduce corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued. Clearly Reichel’s theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes plain as soon as we trace the evolution of shi

ater part of the shield is expended uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form this targe seems to be a burlesque parody of the figure of a Mycenaean shield. The next man has a short oblong shield, rather broad for its length — perha