The World of Homer
in very early post-Homeric times; and Homer minutely describes such
hauberks, 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 protective thigh-pieces (_parameridia_) unknown to Homer.
But, about 530 B.C., these corslets of plate began to go out, and yield
place to hauberks of mail, clasping at front and back; and with these
were worn mailed belts and mailed kirtles, but no thigh-pieces. In
Homer this is the usual equipment, though corslets of plate appear also
to be known.
As to dress, the Ionian warrior of the eighth to early sixth century
did not wear in active life the Homeric smock or chiton. He either
reverted to 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, mailed belt, and mailed flaps under the belt came in,
that the smock or chiton also reappeared, and the tight curt jerkin or
the loin-cloth went out.
Thus the Ionian minstrels did not bring into old lays armour which
they did not wear, and the chiton which they did not wear they did
not excise. Nor did any one, at any time, foist in the round Ionian
parrying shield 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, comparatively short, and not, like the Homeric peplos,
long, loose, and trailing. But these intermediate periods, between the
Homeric and historic, left not a trace in the pictures presented by the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
Why was the new Ionian armour introduced, as we are told it was, while
the un-Homeric features in dress were not introduced into the poems?
Coming to men's dress in Homer, we do not know exactly how long the
ordinary Homeric chiton was. If the word τερμιόεις means "reaching to
the feet," it would apply well to a shield of the huge Mycenaean make,
and to a chiton, and it is used of both.[1] But some take it to mean
"fringed," which cannot apply to the Mycenaean shield, or to chitons as
represented anywhere except perhaps in the Warrior Vase (sub-Mycenæan)
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 swine-herd belts his chiton with a girdle
when he goes out to his work.[2] Probably, therefore, it reached the
feet, and had to be "kirtled up." Now the curt jerkin of seventh to
sixth century art needs no tucking up, it merely covers the buttocks.
The material was linen, if the name chiton be derived from a Semitic
word for linen.
When we read that the tunic of Odysseus was "shining like the skin of
a dried onion, so soft it was, and bright as the sun," it is not quite
clear whether it was as _tight_, or as bright, as the onion skin; and
perhaps its brilliance suggests that it was of silk, rather than of
linen, unstarched.
A person who comes fresh from Homer to the study of Greek archaic art,
of the latest eighth, the seventh, and the sixth centuries, cannot but
be struck by the fact, rather neglected by writers on costume, that the
men are _not_ wearing the Homeric chiton, which needs to be kirtled up
in active life. On the other hand, "on the earliest vases the men
are often nude, with the exception of a loin-cloth 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 "earliest" lays; the chiton, like the armour, as
we are told, must have been introduced by the "tunic-trailing Ionians."
Yet these Ionians, or any Greeks of the eighth to seventh centuries,
in their art are represented as wearing loin-cloths, bathing-drawers,
or curt tight jerkins needing not to be girdled up, except in cases of
reverend seignors, in a house of repose, and at festivals. (See fig. 1.)
One or other or all of the tight curt men's garments--loin-cloth,
bathing-drawers, or jerkin, reaching from the shoulders to just below
the buttocks--was called in Ionia the _cypassis_, a term as much
unknown to Homer as the article itself.
The _κυπυσσις_ is mentioned by Alcaeus (611 B.C.) and prayed for by
Hipponax, an Ephesian poet contemporary with Croesus: 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 costume common for archers and men
at work, in the Assyrian art of the eighth to seventh centuries and in
Aztec art![5]
It is a good dress for fighting men; its fashion changes, and finally
it divides down the front, below the belt, with embroidered borders, in
Assyrian and 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 be girdled when a man went about active work.
At peaceful festivals, Ionians wore the "trailing chiton," in active
life the un-Homeric tight curt garment.
We may understand, I think, that between the age when the Homeric poems
were composed, and the eighth century B.C., men's costume had greatly
altered. The Homeric chiton did not cease to exist, but it was worn by
men merely on festive occasions, and by old men; while the dress in
active life reverted towards 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 warmer south they
found the tight and curt _cypassis_ more suitable. In the sixth to
fifth century the chiton gradually reasserts itself, as we see in the
late black figure, and still more manifestly in the red figure vases.
The chiton is a more graceful, decent, and civilised dress than the
short tight _cypassis_.
Either this was the course of evolution, or "late" poets inserted the
chiton as worn both in peace and war into every part of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_; though, in fact, they saw only old men, or men on formal
occasions, wearing the chiton. Or they applied the word "chiton," in
poetry, to the tight curt garments which were not in the least like the
chiton of Homer.
The alternative explanation is that Homer's men actually wore the
fairly long smock which needed to be girdled up for active work; and
that the word and the thing itself survived in the poems through an age
when men in general wore the tight curt jerkin, or even the loin-cloth
or bathing-drawers.
The _chlaina_ of the Homeric men was a mantle, usually of wool,
fastened with a golden fibula, like that of Odysseus. On the cover
of the pin was represented to the life a hound catching a fawn.[6]
This _chlaina_ was red in colour and was double-folded. The great
overgarment, the _pharos_, was usually of linen; and both these
articles were unshaped and unsewn, mere pieces of material, also used
for blankets in bed.
However we account for it, there was a long period in which Greek
prehistoric and proto-historic dress was not the free-flowing costume
which Homer describes, and which the appearance of safety pins, or
fibulae, after 1400 B.C. attests. They are but rarely found in graves
till the Dipylon age of Iron.
Now no critic has had the heart to say that the costume described by
Homer, the loose chiton, was "written into" early epic lays (which
originally knew it not), at the moment when it came into fashion in the
sixth to fifth centuries. But criticism has taken a similar course in
regard to Homeric armour. This armour, like Homeric male 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 a round or oval blazoned buckler
worn on the left arm. While critics, following Reich el, attribute the
Homeric body armour to Ionian interpolations of the seventh century,
they have also followed him in not observing that Homeric body armour
is not that of the seventh, but rather of the sixth to fifth centuries,
as we shall prove.
We find, in art of the sixth to fifth centuries, or at least in the end
of the sixth and the opening of the fifth centuries, such hauberks as
Homer describes; they have variegated patterns of bronze scales; they
are clasped down the front, and below are the bronze belt (_zoster_)
and πτέρυγες, or mailed flaps.
On the other hand, the Ionic corslet of the seventh and earlier
sixth century is made of plain plates of bronze, fastened at the
sides--back-plate and breastplate--with a short projecting metallic
rim to protect the hip-joints. There is no mailed kirtle, no decorated
belt. The whole equipment, with the addition of mailed flaps to the
plain corslet, is well rendered on a scaraboid gem.[8] In fact, this
kind of plain corslet, with back-plate and breast-plate, fastened
at the sides, is the regular Ionian or seventh to sixth century
body armour, while the hauberk, of metal scales, or small plates,
probably fixed on leather, begins to come in towards the end of the
sixth century. Early in the fifth century, Polygnotus decorated the
Lesche or lounge at Delphi with pictures of the Trojan 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 he wore one, must have been slung over his back
or side at the moment. But in these two passages Homer seems to have in
his mind a corslet of but two _guala_, back-plate and breast-plate
fastened at the sides, like the eighth to sixth century corslet. If
so, he knew both the corslet of two plates, fastened at the sides, and
also the hauberk of scales or small plates of metal fastened in the
centre of front and back. This is not impossible, for, as we shall
prove, the corslet of metal plate was worn even in pre-Homeric Crete;
while the hauberk is represented, if I am right, in art of the Dipylon,
or pre-Dipylon period. Art in the late sixth century proves that both
the corslet of back-plate and breast-plate, and the hauberk of small
plates, fastening at back and in front, were worn.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Tirynthian Vase: Man in Hauberk _By permission