MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR.
As the following remarks are inevitably full of minute and complex
detail, it may be well to say briefly what I wish to prove. According
to the view of many critics, German and English, the "early lays" of
the _Iliad_ were composed when men wore smocks or chitons, like the
Greeks of the historic ages. In war, on this theory, they wore no
armour save the huge body--covering shields of Aegean art, but _not_
the loin-cloth or the bathing-drawers which were the sole costume of
the Aegean fighting man. The Homeric warrior of the "early lays" was
thus accoutred; like the Aegean warrior, he had no body armour save
the shield, but, by way of dress, he had the smock or chiton, not the
loin-cloth.
On this theory the corslet did not come into vogue till the eighth to
seventh century. Then it arrived with the _zoster_, or mailed belt, and
the _mitrê_, or mailed kirtle. When these had been accepted, the huge
early shield, slung by a baldric, was discarded for the round or oval
parrying buckler, blazoned with a device, and carried on the left arm.
The smock or chiton continued to be worn. Ionian poets interpolated
their corslet, mitre, zoster, and greaves into passages of old lays
that originally knew no such armour. The result was confused nonsense.
Against all this I am to contend that greaves, bronze corslets of
plate, bronze girdles, and mailed kirtles were known in Aegean times
long before the arrival of the Achaeans in Crete: proof is given from
a work of Aegean art. Secondly, hauberks of metal scales were worn
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.)
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Sacrifice to Athene--B.F. Archaic Vase-Painting]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Dagger with Lion-Hunters--Mycenaean Shield]
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
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--CRETAN SEAL-IMPRESSION, MINOAN ARMOUR From the
_Annual of the British School at Athens, No. XII_. (_Macmillan_ & _Co.
Ltd_.)]
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.
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).
[Illustration: Fig. 5--Menelaus and Hector fighting over Euphorbus
--Vase-painting from Camirus, Rhodes, in British Museum.]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Warriors arming--Red Figure Vase, Vienna Museum]
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.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Lady Pouring out Wine for Warrior--R. F.
Vase-Painting by Duris, in Vienna]
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
designs, but do not know where it now is.
[16] See Note to this chapter, "Shield and Body Armour."
[17] _R. G. E._ p. 143.
[18] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.
[19] _Ibid._ vii. 206-209. Mr. Leaf's translation, 1906, p. 134.
[20] Iliad, iii. 114, 115.
[21] iii. 134, 135.
[22] Against this opinion may be cited Odyssey, xxii. 108-114, where
the only protective armour used by the men of Odysseus is helmets and
shields, yet the formulae of "doing on bronze over the flesh," and
"donning the fair pieces of armour" are employed. To myself it may
seem that these are epic formulae which arose in a period of corslets
but are used where no corslets were being worn, in the fight with the
Wooers. Mr. Murray, however, takes the absence of specific mention
of corslets in the Odyssey generally as a proof of his theory that
"the _Odyssey_ has been altogether less worked over, expurgated,
and modernised than what books still persist in calling without
qualification 'the older poem'" (_R. G. E._ pp. 145, 146). Here he
has to discover why the Odyssey, according to critics, has (in his
view) been "worked over and modernised" as regards the house and the
bride-price, while in a few fighting passages the warriors are left in
the supposed state of Aegean nakedness, save for the shield, which,
unlike Mycenaean shields, has a bronze plating, as in the _Iliad_. Mr.
Murray (_R. G. E._ p. 137, note 1) grants that armour of bronze "may
have been, in some elements, a revival of something long forgotten...."
but was still unaware that the seals of Haghia Triada represent a man
in a cuirass of plate, a thick belt of plate, and a mailed kirtle.
[23] _Homer and the Iliad_, p. 212.
[24] _Monumenti Antichi_, vol. xiii., 1903, pp. 42, 114.
[25] _B. S. A_., vol. xii. p. opposite plate A.
[26] _Ibid._., vol. xiv., plate vii. A.
[27] Savignoni, _Mon. Ant._, 1903, p. 114.
[28] When disposing, in sixteen lines (_R. G. E_. 154, note I), of my
_Homer and his Age_, Mr. Murray oddly represents me as maintaining
that the body armour of Paris and Hector was "soft and very baggy like
a Minoan cope." As at that time I had never consciously heard of this
famous "Minoan cope," I never dreamed of such a thing as "soft and
very baggy" armour in the _Iliad_, though I know the Protestant silk
armour during "the Popish Plot." In fact, judging from the designs in
_Monumenti Antichi_, the Minoan cope was of hard material.
Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet also report on "a very remarkable
'Mycenaean' bronze breast-plate" from Crete, which "shows four female
draped figures, the two central are holding a wreath over a bird,
below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are dancing. It is
probably a ritual scene, and may help to elucidate the nature of early
Aegean cults, in which female worshippers and sacred trees and birds
are common." _J. H. S_., vol. xix., 1899, p. 322.
[29] _Iliad_, xvi. 134.
[30] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 580, citing Studniczka, p. 59.
[31] The "taslets" of Dugald Dalgetty (1645) were thigh pieces
(cuisses), as in seventh to sixth century Greek art.
[32] I had written this before the publication of Miss Stawell's _Homer
and the Iliad_. In pp. 204-206, she has taken the word out of my mouth.
[33] _Iliad_, iv. 141-144.
[34] On the affair of Menelaus, see Leaf, vol. i. p. 581, and note
I, where Mr. Leaf thinks the clasping of the corslet in front "an
unreasonable arrangement." Mr. Murray (_R. G. E_. pp. 144, 145)
also takes it that there was "a solid metal breast-plate." The term
_γύαλον_ (_Iliad_, v. 99), where an arrow hits "hard by Diomede's
right shoulder the plate of his corslet," may refer to the broad plate
over the shoulder-strap; some of the corslets of two metal plates have
shoulder-straps in art. We really cannot expect to understand every
detail with certainty, while we have no actual examples of the corslets
and shields of many early centuries before our eyes. Mr. Ridgeway
believes the body armour of the Achaeans to have been hauberks of
bronze scales or small plates, not back-and breast-plates as in seventh
and early sixth century art. He illustrates by many bronze studs found
at Koracev and Ilijak in Bosnia, of the Glasinatz epoch (_Early Age of
Greece_, vol. i. pp. 435, 436). Such a hauberk would well correspond
to that worn by "the bronze-shirted Achaeans." The hauberk would be "a
shirt of leather," with "small pieces of bronze, either in the form
of studs, or scales, or rings, or by the addition of plates of larger
size" (_Ibid_. p. 310). The hauberk made of metal studs on leather
seems to be illustrated in Schliemann's copy of a man on a very old
vase from Tiryns, of a style apparently earlier than the art of the
Dipylon (Schliemann, _Tiryns_, plate xvii.).
[35] Frontispiece.
[36] _B. S. A_., vol. xii., plate A.
[37] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573, note I, citing M. d'Arbois
de Jubainville, _La Civilisation des Celtes et celle de l'Epopée
Homerique_, p. 349, Paris, 1899.