The World of Homer
We shall first take the evidence of the black figure vases of the sixth
century, and then that of the red figure vases which came in near the
end of that age. In one (Atlas, fig. 43) the 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 Achilles.[29] These stars appear on an Assyrian
corslet in Layard's _Monuments_. There is a belt and a mailed kirtle
or mailed flaps; below appears the tight _cypassis_, not the flowing
chiton.
Next, in a Corinthian black figure vase (Atlas, fig. 45) the charioteer
wears the plain corslet of two plates with projecting rim (no _zoster_
and _mitrê_); the dress is a tight jerkin. The women wear large mantles
over 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 (64) one has the plate corslet with projecting rim.
In the well-known archaic pyxis from Camirus (see fig. 5), Menelaus,
Hector, and Euphorbus wear, over the cypassis, plain corslets, with a
hatched projecting rim.
In "Death of Antilochus" (Part II. fig. 15) the plain plate corslet is
worn over the flowing chiton, there is no mailed kirtle and belt. In
the "Death of Achilles" (fig. 14) we have the plain corslet over the
cypassis. In "Departure of Amphiaraus" the hero wears the plain plate
corslet, and no mailed kirtle (fig. 73).
So much for these black figure vases. The older they are, the more they
favour the plain plate corslet fastened at the sides, and the cypassis;
and the less they favour the decorated hauberk, mailed kirtle, and free
flowing chiton. But the two styles overlap.
In the later red figure vases, the plain corslet sometimes occurs, but
the vast majority show the flowing chiton, under the richly variegated
hauberk of mail, clasping in front, and having broad shoulder plates
coming over from behind and fastened in front; with the plated flaps,
and below them the flowing chiton, as a general rule. It is this later
style, or something very like it, that Homer usually describes.
If the armour was written into the poem late, if in the earliest
lays the men wore no armour but the shield, the change to hauberk,
zoster, and plated flaps was made by late poets about the end of the
sixth century or the beginning of the fifth, but the old huge 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 loosely fitting garment,
reaching apparently as low as the knees, but gathered up into the belt
for active exertion,"[30]--must also have been interpolated into the
poems about the middle of the sixth century, when the cypassis was
beginning to go out of favour.
It is strange that these facts--the seventh century armour and costume
are un-Homeric (though we cannot prove that Homer knew _only_ the
hauberk clasped in front), the sixth to fifth century armour and
costume 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 Homer, as,
on the Reichelian theory, they ought to do; practical warriors would
expect to hear of them from the late minstrels. We now prove Homer's
knowledge of the hauberk, clasped at front and back.
There is a passage in the _Iliad_ (iv. 132-140) which vexes critics;
we give it in Mr. Leaf's translation. To ruin the Trojans, Athene
makes Pandarus break the oath of truce, and shoot at Menelaus. She
then guides the arrow so that it may merely 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 (ἔπεσε) upon
the firm belt; through the inwrought (δαιδαλέοιο) belt it sped, and
through the curiously wrought breast-plate it pressed on, and through
the taslet"[31] (μίτρη, plated kirtle) "he wore to shield his flesh,
a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on
even through this," and drew blood.
The arrow-head was of iron, not bronze, as was usual, and of a
primitive pattern, inserted into the wood of the shaft, and "whipped"
with sinew (νεῦρον, Iliad, iv. 151). When the arrow is extracted (line
216) the corslet is not mentioned, as I suppose because the arrow
passed through the place where the corslet clasped in front. When the
corslet was unclasped, the arrow had only to be pulled out of the belt
and kirtle.
Now the whole passage is explained by a red figure vase in the Vienna
Museum (Atlas, figs. 71 a, b, c) (fig. 6). Here we see first, a warrior
in helmet and flowing chiton, putting on his greaves. Next him is a
warrior clasping 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 his shoulders. For this arrangement see
also Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 176, fig. 137.
In _Iliad_, xx. 413-417, Achilles sends his spear through the clasping
plate of belt, buckle, and hauberk at the back.
In the third picture (fig. 7), a warrior, fully armed, has his hand
in the richly adorned belt (_zoster_) which he is fixing over the
juncture of corslet and mailed kirtle. If an arrow lights on the
central clasp of this belt (1) it will pass through the meeting-place
in front of his corslet, (2) and then will encounter, especially 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 that of, say, 520-470
B.C. Meanwhile the arrow-head, whipped with sinew into the wooden
shaft, is of a primitive pattern; and the accompanying reference to the
art of Maeonian and Carian women, in staining ivory red, "a treasure
for a king," shows no notion of the Ionians in Maeonia and Caria, or of
the republics of 510-470 B.C.[33]
If, then, in the late sixth or early fifth century, a poet introduced
the latest type of armour, he also preserved the primitive arrow,
and the political and geographical conditions prior to the Ionian
settlements in Asia. This combined innovation and conservatism are
incredible.[34]
The general conclusion seems to be that there was, in men's dress and
armour, a break of several centuries during which un-Homeric costume
and armour existed, and that--about the time just 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 arrows in far off days, when the bow,
rather than the spear, was the chief weapon of attack, when arrow-heads
were of stone; and it went out when glory was only to be won at close
quarters.
Why the plain plate corslet tended to go out, about the time of the
Persian war, while the flimsy but highly decorated mail hauberk came
in, a mere _jascran_, it is not easy to conjecture; but probably the
hauberk was adapted from Assyrian and Egyptian armour of the period.
The _jaseran_ went out again, and the plate corslets of our Museums
came in again, in the fifth to fourth centuries.
It is manifestly open to critics to argue that Homeric armour never
existed, in Greece, before the sixth to fifth centuries, and that it
was then interpolated into the Epics. 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 when it
first appears in art? Or are we to say that the artists who represent
it were "archaising," were making a guess at what the costume of the
heroic age might have been?
This cannot be, for the dress is the historic Greek costume which they
then wore. As Panathenaic vases maintained archaic costume long 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 with warriors
rendered in relief,[35] on a gem cited, on a remarkable bronze in the
British Museum of a mounted man, and so forth.[36]
I cannot say that Homer always has hauberks, not corslets of back-plate
and breast-plate in his mind. The two passages in which the front
_gualon_ is pierced over the belly, look as if Homer knew both corslet
and hauberk. On the other hand, the epithets of the corslet commonly
used, _ποικίλος, παναίολος, πολυδαίδαλος_, 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 vases, while the _zoster_
and _mitrê_ are common in Homer, and were never worn, as far as art
shows, with the Ionian back-plate and breast-plate, though they both
appear with the plate cuirass on the seal impressions of Haghia Triada.
NOTE
_Body-covering shield with corslet_.--Reichel's argument is that a man
with a body-covering needs no corslet. I have shown (_Homer and His
Age_, pp. 132-136) that warriors of the eleventh century A.D. and later
employed the great shield reaching from neck to ankles, and also wore
breast-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 authors, especially Mr. Hill-Tout, describe
North American corslets of various materials, hide, wood, wicker-work,
and copper, "the last armour was everywhere used," in addition to the
great shields. For the eleventh to twelfth century of our era, see _La
Chancun de Willame_, 716-726.
Reichel's argument against the combination of huge shield with corslet
is thus historically valueless, though "the ancient Celts used no
defensive armour but the long shield, and fought from chariots."[37]
If we only look at the Celts, Reichel seems justified, but we look
also at the North Americans and at mediaeval Europe. Down to 1424,
the fighting man in full body armour used large shields in attacking
fortified positions _se couvrant de sa targecte pour doubte des
pierres._ (D'Aulon, in _Procès de Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii. p. 216).
[1] _Iliad_, xvi. 803 (the shield); _Odyssey_, xix. 242 (the chiton).
[2] _Odyssey_, xiv. 72.
[3] Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 200.
[4] See Studniczka, _Geschichte der altgriechischen Tracht_, p. 21, and
notes.
[5] See Layard, _Monuments_, in many plates.
[6] Odyssey, cxix, 225 _et seqq_.
[7] See three sorts on the dagger from a tomb in the Mycenaean
acropolis.
[8] _Catalogue of British Museum Gems_, 1888, No. 294.
[9] _Iliad_, xvii. 312-315.
[10] Pausanias, x. 26.
[11] So, too, _Iliad_, xiii. 507, 508.
[12] Schliemann, _Tiryns_, plate xvii. b.
[13] _Homerische Waffen_, 2nd edition, Vienna, 1901.
[14] Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 629.
[15] I have seen another archaic bronze plate corslet, with engraved