Homer and His Age

ime. A corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate, with oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily i

an graves. But does this prove anything? Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean art. 160 Meanwhile, bronze corslets are very frequently me

rcely to have worn any chitons in battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to have had any bronze shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has pointed out. Nothing can be less like a chiton or smock, loose

might be from a padded linen chiton ([Greek: linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as by nervous Protestants during Oates’s “Popish Plot”), to a leathern chiton, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to plates. 163 Here, in this armoured chiton, would be an object that a poet might readily call “a chiton of bronze.” But that, if he lived in the Mycen

hing”— garments set with the golden discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet, he says, would not be “many glittering,” but would reflect “a single star of light.” 164 Now, first, even if the star were a single star, it would be as “many glittering” when the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the star that danced when Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary corslets of the Iron Age were not “many glittering,” practical corslet-wearing critics would ask the poet, “why do you call corslets ‘many glittering’?” Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely

n means, first, her waist; next, her blouse (American). But Mr. Myres and Reichel say that the secondary sense of thorex is not breastplate but “body clothing,” as if a man were all breast, or wore

ell argue that a “waistcoat” might come to mean “body clothing in general,” as that a word for the male breast became, first, a synonym for the covering of the male buttocks and for apparel in general, and, next, for a bronze breastplat

he word chiton; and when a warrior was transfixed by a spear, they said that his “many-glittering, gold-studded thorex,” that is, his body clothing in general, was pierced. It does seem simpler to hold that chiton meant chiton; that thorex meant, first, “breast,” then “breastplate,” whether of linen, or plaited leather, or bronze, and that to pierce a man through his [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] meant

shield needs no body armour, or uses t

roquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with corslets, even when the shield was worn,

g failed to rescue Vivien in battle, throws down his weapons and armour, blaming each piece for having failed him. Down goes the heavy lance; down goes

ow-proof, body-covering shields of buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the Iroquois in battle, “they were struck amazed that two of their number should have been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields.” We have already al

ch was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson’s Bay Co. some of the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from the traders and make polished circular shields of these.

series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind of shirt of doub

the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae, which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets these bo

aited, or wooden, or buff corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that the Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the [Greek: linothoraex] (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois) to a sort of jack or jaseran wit

ad, II. 529, 5 30. “Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes” (Anabasis, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop into the [Greek: streptos chitoon] of Iliad, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or s

istance. Again, such a bronze chiton might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear dr

ived a thrust at close quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the Master of Sinclair (1708). 173 It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear in breast or back

ourse, Quintus knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the resistance of the corslet, even when

shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede’s spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that he wore no shield, or a sma

cys, into his belly (XVII 311–312). Thus the corslet scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects him against an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his corslet and the spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet

he Ionian corslet. 175 The gold breastplates of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by poets of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have filtered in,

ar to rhapsodists living centuries later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not modernise the shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all uncritical p

low, or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the mechanism (see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides. Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull me

lank it rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death.” Mr. Leaf says, “It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a breastplate, there is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend aside and so to avoid the point. . . . ” But I suppose that t

r, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles. “But then he will slay me naked,” that is, unarmed. “He still had his corslet,” the critics say, “so how could he be naked? or, if he had no corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the corslet age.” Now certainly Hector was wearing a corslet, which he had taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story

ed up to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go as spies they wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no corslet is mentioned in Nestor’s arms in his tent. But are we to explain this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the author of Iliad, Book X., and all the many authors and editors of the Odyssey happened to be profound archaeologists, and, unlike their contemporaries, the l

s of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d’Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would n

d Hector. Aias draws the lucky lot; he is to ‘meet Hector, and bids the others pray to Zeus “while I clothe me in my armour of battle.” While they prayed, Aias “arrayed himself in flashing bronze. And when he had now clothed upon his flesh all his pieces of armour” ([Greek: panta teu

ut twenty more passages in which [Greek: teuchea] include corslets. Among these references two are from the Doloneia (X. 254, 272), where Reichel finds no mention of corslets. How Robert can tell [Greek: t

ias. . . . ” 178 Robert, however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among “al the [G

r pieces of armour” [Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends “joyfully take his pieces of armour” [Greek: teuchea] “from his shoulders” (Iliad, VII. 20

excise whatever passage does not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut, supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of Thetis to Hephae

armour.” If so, here is the corslet, but in this case, if a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or rings of bronze be meant, gualon cannot mean a large “plate,” as it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, “It seems certain that [Greek: streptos chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail.” 180 Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As usual, we come to a deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one can see that, in the space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator who wrote V. i 12, i 13 could f

the corslet of Diomede (Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be sure, which the critics think interpolated. However this may be, the stripping of the (same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of the shield, but must refer to other pieces of armour: “all the pieces of armour.” So other pieces of defensive armour besides the shield are throughout taken for granted. If they were not there they could not be stripped. It is the chitons that Agamemnon does something to, in the case of two fallen foes (Iliad, XI. 100), and Aristarchus thought that these chi

d to, corroborate the existence of corslet, zoster, and zoma as articles of defensive armour. 181 “Recent discoveries,” says Mr. Evans, “thus supply a double corroboration of the Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round shield a

grave suggest that corslets existed. Homer’s men, on the other hand, have, at least in certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and bronze cuirasses of no great resisting power, perh

cenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that for body armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes: “The armour of Homeric heroes corresponds closely

breastplate had become absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield” (where?) “and corslet played a

later times is unknown to Homer,” with “a very few curious excepti

ge scene on the Mycenaean silver vase represents the Mycenaean prime, and that, as there is but one jersey among eight men otherwise stark naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the chitons in the Iliad, these having been interpolated by late poets who did not run about with nothing on. We might call the whole poem late, because the authors know nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers so common on the “monuments.” The argument compel

belt of his shield, as an angler takes off his fishing creel, and there he was, totally disarmed. No squire was needed to disarm him, any more than to disarm Girard in the Chancun de Willame. Nobody explains wh

, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and zosters. There is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a targe should not also wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also wear his cotto

r leather shield. “Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the Iliad, are never f

nts, which could only belong to shields, 188 were found, but bronze shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against stone-headed arrows. Homer’s shiel

ings known by the original singer. These rhapsodists, we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. 189 At other times they are said to introduce

are as common in one “rhapsody” as in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are “bronze-chitoned”), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the Iliad. As for “the iron age,” no “rhapsodist

icture of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian tradition, that there could be no long epic in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much the greater part of the Iliad, must necessarily, they say, be the work of continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which, they assume, can only be explained as the result of a compilation of the patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many men in many lands and ages made the Epic, their contributions cannot but be marked by the inevitable changes in manners, customs, beliefs, implements, law

e epic poets shunned, as far as possible, all that was recent,” and also that for fear of puzzling their military audiences they did the reverse: “they probably kept account of the arms and armour of their own day.” 191 Now the late poets, on this showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always sp

d greaves have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they are conservative archaeologists. In that case,

enaean prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Myce

by the descriptions of culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all the facts. The other hypothesis, that the Iliad was begun near the Mycenaean prime and was

r, Zoma,

the golden buckles of the zoster were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow alighted upon the firm zoster; through the wrought zoster it sped, and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through the mitre he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on even th

the side); that the zoster, a mailed belt, buckled just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that the arrow went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through the place where the plates of the corslet met, and then

. . . . This view is strongly supported by all the archaic vase paintings I have been able to find.” 192 We see a “corslet with a projecting rim”; that rim is called zoma and holds the zoster. “The hips and u

ave seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry; that “Homer” saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed tha

opinion, a “girdle” “holding up the waist-cloth (zoma), so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!” Reichel’s arguments against corslets “militate just as strongly against the presence of such a mitrê, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet. . . . The conclusion is that the metallic mitrê is just as much an intruder into the armament of the Epos as the corslet.” The process of evo

of some more or less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the linothorex (like the Iroquois cotton thorex), and next, as a rule, superseded that with the bronze thorex, while retaining the huge shield, because the bronze thorex was so inadequate to its purpose of defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming to the shock with heavy spears, and

Greaves

adorned and strengthened leather caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a conical cap set with what may be boars’ tusks, with a band of the

ars a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly li

nothing about heroic costume (cf. The Doloneia). As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs nowhere else in Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice — a hurried council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of tw

ea

s, [Greek: kunmides] “were gaiters of stuff or leather”; the one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII.

while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in the Balkan peninsula at Glassinav?. 199 Thus all Homer’s descrip

Illyrians in his day. 200 Though the word for the spike in the butt (sauroter) does not elsewhere occur in the Iliad, the practice of sticking the spears erect in the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: “They lean upon th

e of military equipment in advance of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that of the late “warrior vase.” He is also very familiar with some uses of