WOMEN'S COSTUME

Fig. 3.—Tirynthian Vase: Man in Hauberk

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 orjaseranof 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'sMonuments. 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 orzosterof 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,cypassisunder 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, theirzoster, 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 themitrêof 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 themitrê.

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 foughtin battleas six or seven men, in Aegean art, fight inchance 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 thegravesof 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 greatshield 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, andmitrê, 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 theIliad, 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 thecypassis, andparameridia, cuisses, tight thigh pieces (the "taslets" of 1640 A.D.). That did not happen; Homer knows no thigh pieces orparameridia, 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 anobiter 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 opposingtheory 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 wordθωρήσσεσθαι, to put on thethorexor breast covering, is constantly employed in the general sense of arming, both inIliadandOdyssey,though in the latter no corslet is specifically named. It would have been as easy to coin a verb for arming fromἀσπίς, the shield, in an age when shields were the only armour. Thatθώρηξshould ever have been a term for the shield seems to me incredible.

The corslet has many epithets, expressing the elaborateness of its decoration, such asποικίλος, 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 ofγύαλαwhatever they may have precisely been, for sometimes the epithets applied to the Homeric corslet do not suit plate but mailed armour.

Fig. 4.—Cretan Seal-impression, Minoan 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 byAegeans, 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 decoratedplatecorslet, with an obviously metallic belt, and below it a mailed kilt or apron, the Homericmitrê. 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'sPictorial 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'sMonuments. There is a belt and a mailed kirtle or mailed flaps; below appears the tightcypassis, 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 (nozosterandmitrê); 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 tightcypassis(fig. 51). In three combats (figs. 63, 64, 65) the warriors wear thecypassis, 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 Euphorbuswear, 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).

Fig. 5—Menelaus and Hector fighting over EuphorbusVase-painting from Camirus, Rhodes

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 knewonlythe 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 theIliad(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.

Fig. 6.—Warriors armingRed 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. InIliad, 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 orzoster. 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 alsopreserved 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 wasneverrevived. 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 merejascran, it is not easy to conjecture; but probably the hauberk was adapted from Assyrian and Egyptian armour ofthe period. Thejaseranwent out again, and the plate corslets of our Museums came in again, in the fifth to fourth centuries.

Fig. 7.—Lady Pouring out Wine for WarriorR. 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 frontgualonis 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 thezosterandmitrêare 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.

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'sChamplain, p. 113, New York, 1903; Laverdière'sChamplain, 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, seeLa 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 positionsse couvrant de sa targecte pour doubte des pierres.(D'Aulon, inProcès 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, 225et 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 "theOdysseyhas 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 theIliad. 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 myHomer 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 theIliad, though I know the Protestant silk armour during "the Popish Plot." In fact, judging from the designs inMonumenti 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.

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'sHomer 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 termγύαλον(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.

As to the evolution of feminine costume, I speak with the greatest diffidence. Homer's women wore the loose brooched peplos, with brooch, pin, clasp, and over it thepharos. Women of the later dark age and the Dipylon period apparently dressed otherwise. In the archaic period the brooched peplos, girdled at the waist, was worn; but I think that there was also a revival or survival of Aegean sewn and shaped bodices, jackets, and skirts. Lastly, historic Greece reverted to the Homeric peplos andchlaina.

The discussion is, inevitably, concerned with minutiae in details about which our actual information is far from being minute. We must therefore state here explicitly the conclusions to which we are led: namely, that neither the male nor female dress nor the armour described in the Epics was introduced, at any period, by the Ionians employed in any one of the four or five "recensions" which are postulated by certain critics, as in the "firstIliad" of Robert, and his "second, third, and fourthIliads"[1]On the other hand, we contend that both the costume and the armour in Homer are of a single period, earlier than the Dipylon and barbaric Tirynthian age of art, while historic Greece from the middle of the sixth century began to revert to something like the Homeric type.

We must remember that hitherto no representationsof Homer's people in the free art of the Aegeans have been discovered, and thence no light can be derived. When the crude art of Tiryns and, later (?) of the "Geometric" school of ornament comes into view (1000-800 B.C.?), the designs of men and women are childish. In painted vases which may represent the palsied decadence of the Aegean age, the human figures are simply absurd, still they are recognisably human; though in vases of what may be called the "dotted" style of outline, they have heads like birds, as on dotted bronzes of northern Italy in the Early Age of Iron. In the "Dipylon" style, again, as soon as human beings are represented, the heads of the men are like potatoes set on sticks; the torso is an inverted isosceles triangle, with the pointed waist for apex; and the naked legs are enormously thick in thighs and calves. The women's bodies also are often equilateral triangles; the parts below the waist are clothed in tight skirts, as a general rule; the breasts, when the bust is represented, are either bare, or clad in a very tight bodice, or are hidden by a hood which falls below the shoulders like a cape. In one Tirynthian fragment we see a stout lady in a "princess frock" tight, "of the Menzies tartan,"[2]and all of one piece; another design shows a waist no thicker than a broomstick[3](figs. 8, 9). These costumes of women, in Tirynthian and Dipylon art, are un-Homeric and post-Homeric. I doubt if we find such female costumes as Homer apparently describes recognisably represented in Greek art till the sixth and fifth centuries.

Fig. 8—Princess Frock: Tiryns.

This seems to be stated with unnecessary force, because, it may well be said, the meaning of the sentence turns on the words "recognisablyrepresented." How are we to "recognise," in art, costumes of which Homergives us only brief verbal descriptions? Are we not deceived by the free and vivid style of Homer? All his human beings and gods come in such living forms before us, that we see the flowing, glistening garments of Nausicaa and Athene swaying with their motions. We can see nothing like this represented in Greek art till the late sixth century and onwards; because, it may be said, till that date Greek art is hard, prim, constrained, conventional,—in fact, archaic. It is therefore, we may be told, a kind of logical illusion which prevents us from recognising the costumes of Homer's women in Greek plastic art, till that art itself is beginning to attain Homeric freedom.

These considerations must be kept in mind. But another error is apt to be suggested when we read that the historic Hellenic costume, or that part of it styled "the Doric peplos," "is implied by the allusions of Homer," the view of the ingenious Studniczka.[4]The remark is illustrated by fig. 10, in which we see a lady in "a Doric peplos," though how Achaean women of Homer's time could wear the dress of the Dorians whom Homer ignores is not apparent. This graceful and breezy costume is, in fact, like what we suppose Homer to have had in his mind, and to have seen. But it is not in the least like the dress shown in the art which is immediately subsequent to his age, the art of Tiryns and of the Dipylon; and, as far as I can ascertain, it is not the costume displayed in the archaic art up to the middle of the sixth century. Archaic Greek female costume, however, has this much in common with Homeric and later Greek costume, that it essentially differs, often, from Aegean or Mycenaean dress.

In describing the contrast of styles between the pre-Homeric Aegean dress and the Homeric costume for women, Mr. Leaf says that the Mykenaean (Aegean) women wore "a close fitting bodice, sharply marked offfrom the full skirt..."; and though there were many changes of fashion in the Aegean world, this account holds good for its later periods. "The dress of Greek women in historic times is of a totally different kind. It is marked by simplicity and flowing vertical lines.... The peplos is, in fact, no more than a square woollen blanket ... taken up round the middle by a girdle and retained in its place on the shoulders by pins." The Aegean female dress, sewn and fitted, did not need pins or brooches,περόναι, ἐνεταί, πόρται.[5]On the other hand, "no pins or fibulae have been found among the remains of the Mykenaean prime," while they are common in the latter "lower city" below the acropolis of Mycenae.

Mr. Leaf therefore conceives that "during the prime of Mykene fashion was dominated by a non-Hellenic influence," perhaps Oriental. Bodices and separate flounced skirts were in, "but for some reason which we cannot expect to guess, fashion returned, at the end of the Mykenaean age, to the older and simpler dress" (the Homeric), "which held its ground till classical times."[6]The usual explanation is that the fibulae and the pinned peplos were brought in from the north by Achaean invaders; in the north the fibulae had long been common;[7]and that the style of costume persisted continuously into historic times, being the familiar classical Greek dress.

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