The World of Homer
of John Murray, Esq_. Schliemann's _Tiryns_, plate xvii. b]
We have some red figure vases with the plain plate corslet, and some
black figure vases with the decorated corslet or rather hauberk of
scales, and mailed flaps; but the set of fashion is away from the plain
plate corslet fastened at the sides, to the decorative hauberk of
scale-mail, fastening in front,--Homer's type of corslet (at least in
some cases), and the corslet of two very early Tirynthian vases.
As far as we can trust such crude art[12] (fig. 3), the Tirynthian
body-covering was a jack or _jaseran_ of rings or scales, probably
fastened on leather, not the back-plate and breast-plate of the eighth
to early sixth centuries. Why, before the Persian war, Greek warriors
adopted the hauberk of scale-armour 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,
and jutting rim of metal; some the scaled hauberk, shoulder pieces,
and plated πτέρυγες, or flaps, with or without the bronze girdle or
_zoster_ of Homer. A number of the scales, iron or bronze, of the
hauberks have been found in the palace of the Egyptian king Apries, of
the first part of the sixth century.
In archaic art, and in early sixth century black figure vases, the
warrior wears the tight, un-Homeric, _cypassis_ under his corslet. In
later black 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 armour, in cases to be proved, are like those of the
later sixth and early fifth centuries, rather than of the eighth to
early sixth centuries.
Yet modern criticism, while it finds no fault with the sixth to fifth
century costume of Homer's men, excises their sixth century hauberks,
clasping down the middle, their _zoster_, or mailed girdle, their
mitre, which served the purpose of the sixth to fifth century mailed
flaps or mailed kirtle, and their greaves, 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
interpolations of armour into Homer, they cannot have been made, as
Reichel thought, in the seventh century, but very late, say 540-470
B.C., when armour shifted from bronze back-plate, breast-plate, and
rim, to scaled hauberk, shoulder pieces, _zoster_, and metal plated
flaps, equivalent in protective purpose to the _mitrê_.
The modern theory that Homeric armour is of the seventh century,
which it demonstrably is not, starts from the late Dr. Reichel's
essay on Homeric armour.[13] Reichel built on very slender and sandy
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 conceal the
body, also taken for granted as naked). He did not know the proof of
the existence of Aegean body armour, which we shall cite, and he really
evolved things "out of his inner consciousness."
Reichel, we must add, could not argue securely from the absence of
actual corslets in grave-furniture of the Aegean age. Though hauberks
occur constantly in the art, they are not found in the _graves_ of
the sixth 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 of ground.... He regards the thin gold plates found on
the breasts of the skeletons at Mykene as possibly the funereal
representatives of metal sewn on to the chiton, and thus forming a
prae-Ionic corslet."[14]
Had he lived, he would have seen an undeniable "prae-Ionic corslet,"
no hauberk but a cuirass of plate, on the Minoan seal impressions of
Haghia Triada.
But the evidence for the non-existence of prae-Ionic corslets based on
their absence from tombs, even if it were absolute, which it is not,
would have been of little avail. How many Ionic plate corslets are in
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 the
archaic style, figures of men and women in archaic costume.[15] Thus
the non-existence of objects represented often in the art of remote
ages cannot be demonstrated by our failure to discover specimens of
them.
Reichel proceeds from the imaginary postulate that a man who has
a body-covering shield dispenses with body armour. As a matter of
historical fact he often does not.[16] Next, the Aegean shield, being
heavy, made chariots necessary. (But chariots have been used 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 corslet, metal girdle, and _mitrê_, a
mailed kirtle, were adopted about 700 B.C. As it was now ridiculous,
says Reichel, to think of a man fighting only in his shirt, late poets
introduced body armour into old portions of the _Iliad_, made when body
armour was unknown.
Of course, by parity of reasoning, the new poets ought also to have
got rid of chariots, bronze weapons, cairn-burial, the bride-price,
Homeric chitons, and so forth, all of them obsolete or little used
things in the age (700-600 B.C.) of corslets, greaves, 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 in Greek armour of the sixth
century; but, says Mr. Murray, "all the heroes were summarily provided
with breast-plates, _θώρηκες_."[17] Mr. Leaf, on the other hand,
denies this; "the corslet is given to some only, and that in the most
capricious fashion."[18]
Mr. Leaf's contention (Mr. Murray's is an _obiter dictum_) rests on the
postulate that, when the corslet is not explicitly named in connection
with a hero, he has no corslet; he has only a shield. If so, why are
his "pieces of armour" (_τέυχεα_), whether he is putting them on or
off, whether he is being stripped of them or is stripping others,
always called τέυχεα 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 he had now clothed upon his flesh all
his armour...."[19] The time required, and the phrase "all his armour"
which "clothes his flesh," cannot possibly apply to slinging on or off
a shield, and donning or doffing a helmet, the work of five seconds.
The sword was always worn, in peace and in war.
This is so certain that we waste no more space over the matter. All
the gentry wear τέυχεα, "pieces of armour," which they all take off
and lay on the ground while they watch a duel, and which 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] They themselves "are leaning on their
great shields," which are not their armour.[21] This use of τέυχεα is
universal in Homer, and so, for men-at-arms, is the possession of body
armour.[22]
The difficulties which critics find in the details and mechanism of the
armour cannot be impossibilities, for the "later poets" were familiar
with corslets, and would not write nonsense about them. The opposing
theory is that Ionian minstrels introduced the corslet of their own
age, 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
poems,--and yet never objected to the absurdities it introduced,--such
a theory cannot bear thinking out."[23] When we came to discuss Homeric
tactics, we found precisely the same objection to the German theories;
they represent the poets as pleasing military experts by writing
nonsense.
The body armour is thus an integral part of the poem. The word
_θωρήσσεσθαι_, to put on the _thorex_ or breast covering, is constantly
employed in the general 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 arming from _ἀσπίς_, the shield, in an
age when shields were the only armour. That _θώρηξ_ should ever have
been a term for the shield seems to me incredible.
The corslet has many epithets, expressing the elaborateness of its
decoration, such as _ποικίλος, παναίολος, πολυδαίδαλος_; and no such
words apply to the plain metal plates of corslets 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 have two volutes. The corslet was made of _γύαλα_ whatever
they may have precisely been, for sometimes the epithets applied to the
Homeric corslet do not suit plate but mailed armour.
Reichel argued from the absence of corslet, belt, greaves, and mailed
kirtle in the few pieces of Aegean art known to him, that no such
armour was used by Aegeans, and, again, that no such armour was
known to the Achaeans. He was unacquainted with the scores of seal
impressions 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, recognises the armour.[25], It is unmistakable, and the corslet is
so very wide, considering the wasp-like Mycenaean waist, that a spear
could penetrate the side of it without wounding the wearer, a great
puzzle of the critics when the fact occurs in Homer. (See fig. 4 A).
The armour is out of drawing, the man's head is given in profile, his
armour is given full face. The same error is made by the painter of
Menelaus fighting Hector on an archaic dish from Camirus. Euphorbus is
lying on his back, but his corslet is given in full face, 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 very loose thick piece
of armour, as some hold,[27] or "a Minoan cope," as others maintain.
Beneath it is a short jutting ribbed kirtle, as in the seal. I am
unable to decide between cope and cuirass in this instance,[28] but the
bosses appear to be of hard material.
An easy mode of comparing various costumes and pieces of armour as
illustrated in archaic and early Greek art, is to glance at Engelmann
and Anderson's _Pictorial Atlas of Iliad and Odyssey_, 1895. It is
prior to the Cretan discoveries, but is useful to students remote from
collections of Greek works of art.