HOMERIC TACTICS

[1]Iliad, iii. iv.

[2]vii. 332-420.

[3]xviii. 175-177.

[4]Ferdiad, in the Old IrishTain Bo Cualgne, also drags a dead man by his chariot wheels.

[5]R.G.E.p. 118.Ajax, 1031. Euripides,Andromache, 399.

[6]Iliad, vi. 37-65, xi. 122-147.

[7]Iliad, xi. 100, ii. 416.

[8]Ibid.xiii. 439, 440. That the bronze tunic is a softening of the sense by a late interpolator is not very likely, for Homer, we have seen, represents a warrior as cutting off a dead man's hands and head; and if he does not shirk this, if no later hand corrects him, why should he strain at tearing a chiton? Miss Stawell ingeniously remarks that the chiton-tearing is a proof of the prevalent use of corslet? If men fought without corslets, the chiton "must always have been getting torn in the mÃªlÃ©e, whatever the warrior's fate. But the sign would have been unmistakable if the tunic was usually covered by the corslet and could not be torn until that was taken off...." (Homer and the Iliad, p. 211). But, I fear, Homeric warriors did not come to such close quarters as at Rugby football.

[9]Iliad, xvi. 702, 703.

[10]See "Homeric Tactics."

[11]For details and discussion, see "Homeric Armour and Costume."

[12]Iliad, v. 193-205.

[13]On stone and bronze arrow-heads, see Tsountas and Manatt, p. 209.

[14]Kurt MÃ¼ller,Alt Pyhs, p. 292.Attische Mitteilungen, 1909. Cf. plate xv.

Homer is not a scientific military historian, but a poet. Consequently, in his accounts of pitched battles, he naturally dwells on the prowess of famous individuals in the single combat; the struggle of one hero against a group of assailants; the pursuit and the flight; more than he dwells on the long encounter of marshalled lines before "the break in the battle."

Let us consider the battle inIliad, xi. The princes begin by giving their chariots to the charioteers, "to hold them in by the fosse, well and orderly," and "themselves as heavy men-at-arms were hastening about."[1]They are then marshalled in order, with the chariots behind them. Meanwhile Hector arrays the Trojans, being now with the front and now with the rear ranks.[2]The fight begins; "equal heads had the battle." The two forces meet like two bands of reapers shearing the corn of a field from either limit, and meeting in the centre.[3]This steady fight of lines of dismounted men-at-arms endures from dawn to midday, till, at noon, comes "the break in the battle," "the Danaans by their valour brake the battalions."[4]Agamemnon, on foot, rushes into the ruined ranks of Troy, and slays many Trojans in their chariots (which they would naturally mount for the sake of speedier flight); thereis a pursuit of the broken foe, "footmen kept slaying footmen as they were driven in flight, and horsemen slaying horsemen with the sword"; till the flying Trojans rally at the Scaean gate, while Agamemnon still slays the hindmost fugitives. A flesh-wound irks him, and he "retires hurt." Hector, by command of Zeus, has waited for this moment, and now leads a chariot-charge among the scattered Achaeans. Henceforth there is a series of individual encounters; Odysseus is alone and is surrounded; he fights hard; he calls for aid, and is rescued by Menelaus and Aias. Several Achaean princes are wounded, among others Diomede, Agamemnon, and Odysseus retire to their quarters for rest and surgical aid.

This is not scientific fighting: no general is apart, receiving news of the fight, sending supports where they are needed, husbanding the reserves, and so forth. The leaders actuallylead, and their men are discouraged and give ground when the chiefs are put out of action, precisely as in the Highland armies of clans under Dundee or Montrose or Prince Charles, where so much depended on the success of the first onslaught. Homer's men have more faculty for recovering from a severe stroke. The Achaeans, after a long struggle of heavy dismounted men-at-arms, drive the Trojans to the city wall. The Trojans rally, and drive the Achaeans to their own fortifications, where there is a confused mellay at the fosse and under the wall.[5]

Polydamas very properly now advises the chivalry of Troy to dismount and fight on foot (Ï€ÏÏ…Î»ÎÎµÏ‚) in dense columns, while their chariots are held stationary by their squires. Hector approves, and the dismounted Trojans form five columns of attack on a fortified position.[6]The Achaeans, scattered and disheartened, are mainly led and helped by the two Aiantes, but Poseidon rallies five or six young heroes of Boeotia,Aetolia, Crete, and Pylos.[7]They are confessedly both wearied and demoralised by the success of Hector in breaking down the gate.[8]They are actually weeping!

But now, encouraged by the god, they form a "schiltrom," a close clump of spears advanced and levelled, underlying and overlying each other.[9](The spears of defenders and assailants, at the battle of Langside (1568), were so closely interlocked, that discharged pistols and daggers thrown by the combatants lay on them!) Shield touches shield, the plumes of the helmets meet.[10]

As was natural, Hector's column was arrested by the "dark impenetrable wood" of Achaean spears,[11]and now the poet makes Poseidon, who has lost a grandson (xiii. 207) in the fight, stir up Idomeneus, who is at a distance from Hector's point of attack, and we have the day of valour, and the success of the Cretan prince, on the left of the Achaean fortified position. The Boeotians there, with the Athenians and "Ionian tunic-trailers," are hard pressed, but the Aiantes make a stout resistance, and the arrows of the Locrians are showered on Hector's column.[12]Polydamas advises Hector to retreat, but he hurries off and brings up reinforcements in good order. He then tries again and again to break through the schiltrom of the Achaean dismounted men-at-arms, and the two forces clash with cries of onset.[13]

Here we have a renewal of the steady conflict of men duly marshalled. Hector, however, is put out of action, sore smitten by a boulder from the hand of Aias; the Trojans give ground, are pursued, and fall back, till when Hector revives, Aias and the princes who joined him at the command of Poseidon, form a firm line of resistance.[14]

Again there is a dogged contest of marshalled forces,till Apollo causes a panic among the Achaeans, and their line is broken. "Then man fell upon manwhen the close fight was scattered,"[15]and we have a new set of individual valiances, among the bravest; but the Achaean host is flying in disorderly rout, "hither and thither in terror," through the ditch and within the wall.

It is in his chariot, to which he had been carried when stunned by the boulder, that Hector now calls for a chariot charge on the fosse and wall, which Apollo makes possible by levelling the wall into the dyke.[16]After mixed fighting, the spear of Aias is lopped in twain by the sword of Hector, and fire is thrown into the ship of Protesilaus. This is the moment that Achilles has prayed and longed for since the first book of the poem. Addressing Agamemnon, he then swore a great oath by the sceptre that "longing for Achilles shall come upon the Achaeans one and all, when multitudes fall dying before manslaying Hector."[17]In the same book he bids Thetis pray to Zeus to "hem the Achaeans among the sterns of their ships, given over to slaughter."[18]When the Embassy sought Achilles in Book ix., with the offers of Agamemnon, this dire need had not fallen on the Achaeans, and Achilles rejected their prayers. But he promised to fight if Hector, as he burned the ships, came to those of the Myrmidons.[19]

Hector never came so far; for[20]though Achilles kept the letter of his vow in Book ix., and did not arm, he sent Patroclus forth in Achilles' armour, at the head of the Myrmidons, and their charge on rear and flank drove the Trojans far from the ships and the wall.

This is a brief summary of the main movements in the engagement, up to the moment when Achilles let slip the Myrmidons. We see that, setting aside the interferences of gods, and the pardonable exaggeration of the prowess of favourite heroes, we have a set ofas natural pictures of the flux and reflux of battle-tides as if we were reading about Waterloo. The character of the engagements is conditioned by the use of dismounted men-at-arms as heavy infantry, whether employed in lines of resistance, in squares or schiltroms of levelled spears, or in columns of attack. The fighting men in view are the gentry, stiffening "the host," theÎ»Î±ÏŒÏ‚of whose equipment we know little, while the archery of light-armed bowmen, such as the Locrians, is not without its effect. But the bows are short, and the arrow is drawn only to the breast, not, as by Egyptian and Assyrian archers, on the monuments, and by the archers of mediaeval England, to the ear. Chariots are not employed, in Homer, as on the Egyptian monuments, in charging squadrons, closely and neatly arranged, but in the flight and the pursuit, and to bear the prince rapidly to distant points of the field.[21]

The most obvious and closest analogy to Homeric warfare is that of the period (1300-1430 A.D.) when the Flemings and Scots had shown the powerlessness of charges of heavy cavalry against the schiltroms of spearmen, if these had not been broken up by "artillery preparation," by the long bow. Henceforth the English knights, squires, and "lances," or men-at-arms dismounted, their horses being held in reserve, and received the attacks of the heavy French cavalry on foot, with spear, sword, and axe. In case of defeat (which did not occur) or of pursuit, the horses were in readiness. Heavy armed infantry, like the hoplites of historic Greece, were developed later than Homer, and the heavy cavalry then became a separate arm. The changes occurred in the dim age between the date of theIliadandOdysseyand the dawn of historic Greece.Chariots ceased to be employed in war by the Greek cities of Asia. The chief arm was the heavy drilled infantry, the hoplites. We catch our first glimpses of them on the Warrior Vase of the upper and later stratum at Mycenae, and on an old sculptured Mycenaean stele, later "plastered over and painted in fresco." In the former is a line of swordless spearmen on the march; on the latter, a row of swordless spearmen in the act of brandishing the spear. Their bucklers are worn on the left arm: they appear to wear hauberks, not corslets of plate, but one cannot be certain.[22]In these figures we see the germ of the infantry of historic Hellas. The war chariot becoming obsolete, civic cavalry were employed; the horsemen of Colophon were celebrated for dealing a fatal conclusive charge.

Nothing could be much less like Homeric than historical Ionian warfare, except in so far as Homer's dismounted men-at-arms resemble the heavy historic infantry, who never mount.

We have now given a brief sketch of Homer's idea of a general engagement in force. The clash of marshalled lines of heavy dismounted men-at-arms ends in the breaking of the phalanxes, and in the single combats, or combats of small knots of heroes, in which the poet and his audience take special delight.

We now criticise the modern criticisms of Homeric pictures of battles.

Herr MÃ¼lder, in 1906, and Mr. Murray, in 1908, discover that Homeric formations and fighting are a confusion of the methods of historic Greeceâ€”with drilled hoplites and cavalry,â€”and the "Mycenaean" system of "a battle ofpromachoior champions."[23]

According to the English critic, in the Iliad "the men are, so to speak, advertised as fighting in one way,and then they proceed to fight in another."[24]As we have seen, they are "advertised as fighting in one way," that is, in ordered phalanxes of dismounted men-at-arms, and theydofight in that way, from dawn till noon; and then when "the phalanxes are broken," when "the battle is scattered," they "fight in another way"; there is flight, pursuit, and examples of individual valour; there is a rally, and the lines of men on foot re-form. What else could there possibly be? The charge of the Union brigade, at Waterloo, begins by "fighting in one way," a resistless charge of squadrons, and ends by "fighting in another way," in knots, with individual examples of flight, or of single prowess, when PirÃ©'s Red Lancers swoop down on the scattered and broken ranks. At Bannockburn you have the slow advance of the clogged English columns on a narrow front, you have the slow advance in mass of the Scottish spearmen, till "the phalanxes are broken" of England, and then comes the isolated struggle of Edward II., and the charge of d'Argentine,â€”alone.

It was always thus that men fought, before the invention of modern projectiles. It was thus they fought at Inkerman, nay, for a moment at Waggon Hill, as one who was in the thick of it informs me. Ian Hamilton and de Villiers, Albrecht and Digby Jones were among thepromachoi.

There is no confusion of a "Mycenaean" and a historic mode of battle in Homer; and we have absolutely no evidence as to how a "Mycenaean" or Aegean general engagement was conducted: no Aegean work of art in which it is represented.[25]

There is no confusion of military styles in Homer; the trouble is caused when Herr MÃ¼lder chooses to say that there is confusion; that a fight of masses ispromised(apparently by an Ionian interpolator), and that single combats aregiven(apparently by the older minstrel).[26]Both sorts of fighting are given in their proper places: the engagement of masses before, the individual valiances after "the battle is scattered," while in the clash of the massed forces, the conduct of prominent assailants and defenders is noted. MÃ¼lder's remarks arise from his eagerness to prove that not only the armature is a muddle of anachronisms, which is not the case, but that the fighting, too, is anachronistic and self-contradictory.

The aged Nestor remembers and approves of a mode of fighting which, at Troy, has become obsolete, owing to the new system of dismounting the men-at-arms and arraying them in line or in column of attack. He says to his Pylians (Iliad, iv. 303seqq.), "Neither let any man, trusting to his horsemanship and valour, be eager to fight the Trojans alone before the rest, nor yet let him draw back.... But whensoever a warrior from his own chariot can come at the chariot of the foe, let him thrust forth with his spear, even so is the far better way," theoldway. "The style of fighting is not Epic," says Mr. Leaf. It is meant not to be "Epic"; it is old-fashioned, like Nestor.

We know "the old way" from pictures on Egyptian monuments, showing the charge of squadrons using the bow, and routing an irregular advance of Hittite chariotry, using the spear. But, under Troy, the combatantsusually fight dismounted; always, in the opening of a general action. But though Nestor recommends the old chariotry tactics, Herr MÃ¼lder says that he is recommending the historic, "the modern method," and attributing it to the old military school of his youth (Î¿á¼± Ï€ÏÏŒÏ„ÎµÏÎ¿Î¹).[27]The general purpose is to prove that "edifying passages from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into Homer."[28]

The tactics and military formations of Homer are as intelligible as those of Chandos and Henry v. They can only be misunderstood by critics under the suggestion of the idea that theIliadis riddled with Ionian tamperings. The Ionians never touched the matter of theIliad.

[1]Iliad, xi. 49,Î±á½Ï„Î¿á½¶ Î´á½² Ï€ÏÏ…Î»ÎÎµÏ‚ Ïƒá½Î½ Ï„ÎÏÏ‡ÎµÏƒÎ¹Î¸Ï‰ÏÎ·Ï‡Î¸ÎÎ½Ï„ÎµÏ‚. Cf. v. 744,Ï€ÏÏ…Î»ÎÎµÏ‚"may mean eitherfootmenorchampions." Leaf.

[2]Iliad, xi. 59-66.

[3]xi. 67-69.

[4]Î¸Î±Î»Î¬Î³Î³Î±Î¹, xi. 90.

[5]Iliad, xii. 3,Î¼Î¬Ï‡Î¿Î½Ï„Î¿ á½€Î¼Î¹Î»Î±Î´ÏŒÎ½. Cf. xii. 35, 36.

[6]xii. 66-107.

[7]Iliad, xiii. 81-124.

[8]xiii. 80-90.

[9]Ï€Ï„ÏÏƒÏƒÎ¿Î½Ï„Î¿, xiii. 134.

[10]xiii. 128-133.

[11]xiii. 144-148.

[12]xiii. 789-906.

[13]xiii. 833-837.

[14]xv. 299-301.

[15]Iliad, xv. 328.

[16]xv. 343-366.

[17]i. 241-244.

[18]i. 409-412.

[19]ix. 653-656.

[20]xvi. 1-155.

[21]Rapid retreat, xi. 359-360. Rapid pursuit, viii. 87-90, 340-349. Leaf on viii. 348. Cf. Caesar,Bellum Gallicum, iv. 33. Chariot in attendance to remove wounded hero, xi. 273, 399. Quick mounting and dismounting, xvi. 426, 427.

[22]Ridgeway,E. A. G., vol. i. pp. 313-315.

[23]R. G. E.pp. 141-143.Homer und die altjonische Elegie, pp. 32-41.

[24]R. G. E.p. 143.

[25]Mr. Murray writes: "It is in this way" (in phalanxes) "that people are said to be going to fight before each great battle begins. But strangely enough it is not at all in this way that they really fight when the battle is fairly joined, in the heart of the poem. In the heart of the poem, when the real fight comes, it is as a rule purely Mycenaean." We do not know how Mycenaeans fought in a general engagement. But people, in Homer, do fight as they "are said to be going to tight," when a schiltrom of spears is formed and is assailed, as inIliad, xiii. 125-205. There the Trojan charge is checked by the hedge of spears. The general assault, the combined resistance, and the conduct of the most prominent men in defence and attack, is described, just as, at Waterloo and Culloden, historians describe the general conflict, and also the individual prowess of Shaw, Gillie Macbean, and others.

[26]MÃ¼lder,op. cit. p. 32.

[27]MÃ¼lder, op. cit. p. 36.

[28]R. G. E.133, note 1. Thus the hortatory eloquence of Poseidon (xiii. 108 fi.) is an echo of Callinus's stimulating appeal to the young to bestir themselves, when the country is at war. Callinus. fr. 1. Thus Poseidon cannot say "young men, don't be slack," without quoting an Ionian elegiac poet! (MÃ¼lder, pp. 12, 13). It is waste of time to discuss criticism of this sort, especially as, even if there were any borrowing, the Ionian elegy-maker must be reminiscent of theIliad, as Tyrtaeus is in a familiar passage.

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 theIliadwere 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 bodyâ€”covering shields of Aegean art, butnotthe 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 thezoster, or mailed belt, and themitrÃª, 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 theAchaeans 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 theIliadandOdyssey.

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 Ï„ÎµÏÎ¼Î¹ÏŒÎµÎ¹Ï‚ 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-MycenÃ¦an) 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 astight, 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 arenotwearing the Homeric chiton, which needs to be kirtled up in active life. On the other hand, "onthe 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.)

Fig. 1.â€”Sacrifice to Atheneâ€”B.F. Archaic Vase-Painting

One or other or all of the tight curt men's garmentsâ€”loin-cloth, bathing-drawers, or jerkin, reaching from the shoulders to just below the buttocksâ€”was called in Ionia thecypassis, a term as much unknown to Homer as the article itself.

TheÎºÏ…Ï€Ï…ÏƒÏƒÎ¹Ï‚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 reachedto 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 curtcypassismore 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 tightcypassis.

Either this was the course of evolution, or "late" poets inserted the chiton as worn both in peace and war into every part of theIliadandOdyssey; 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.

Thechlainaof the Homeric men was a mantle, usually of wool, fastened with a golden fibula, like thatof Odysseus. On the cover of the pin was represented to the life a hound catching a fawn.[6]Thischlainawas red in colour and was double-folded. The great overgarment, thepharos, was usually of linen; and both these articles were unshaped and unsewn, mere pieces of material, also used for blankets in bed.

Fig. 2.â€”Dagger with Lion-Huntersâ€”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,â€”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),â€”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 claspeddown the front, and below are the bronze belt (zoster) and Ï€Ï„ÎÏÏ…Î³ÎµÏ‚, 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 sidesâ€”back-plate and breastplateâ€”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 theLittle 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 calledguala, 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 thegualonof 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 twoguala, back-plate and breast-platefastened 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.

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