Homer and His Age

by Andrew Lang

{Illustration: FIG. 3.}

There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the Acropolis at Athens. They resemble "two circles joined together so as to intersect one another slightly," or "a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary in size from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware, or glass. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one, in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short, these little objects are representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the "schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only the shield which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig. 3) shows a man with a shield, possibly evolved out of this kind, much scooped out at the waist, and reaching from neck to knees. The shield covers his side, not his back or front. {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24.}

{Illustration: FIG. 4.}

One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the Mycenaean shield was evolved later into the two deep scoops to enable the warrior to use his arms more freely, while the shield, hanging from his neck by a belt, covered the front of his body. Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060-1160 A.D. equally designed to cover body and legs. Men wore shields, if we believe the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which speed of foot is desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty. The shield then was hung over one side, and running was not so very difficult as if it hung over back or front (cf. Fig. 5). The shields sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the calf of the leg. {Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 5, Grave III. at Mycenae.} The wearer of the largest kind could only be got at by a sword-stab over the rim into the throat {Footnote: Ibid., p. 2, fig. 2.} (Fig. 5). Some shields of this shape were quite small, if an engraved rock-crystal is evidence; here the shield is not half so high as an adjacent goat, but it may be a mere decoration to fill the field of the gem. {Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 7.}

{Illustration: FIG. 5. RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS}

Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections of cylinders; several of these are represented on engraved Mycenaean ring stones or on the gold; the wearer was protected in front and flank {Footnote: Ibid., p. 4, fig II, 12; p. I, fig I.} (Fig. 5).

In a "maze of buildings" outside the precincts of the graves of Mycenae, Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient than the contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora, the "Warrior Vase" (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-fitting coat of mail over a chiton, which reaches with its fringes half down the thigh. The shield is circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is infantile. Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least, from neck to shin. {Footnote: Schuchardt, Schliemann's Excavations, pp. 279-285.} They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets. On a Mycenaean painted stele, apparently of the same relatively late period, the costume is similar, and the shield—oval—reaches from neck to knee. {Footnote: Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314.} The Homeric shields do not answer to the smaller of these late and ugly representations, while, in their bronze plating, Homeric shields seem to differ from the leather shields of the Mycenaean prime.

Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in the British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular shield reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures in which Mr. Arthur Evans finds "a most valuable illustration of the typical Homeric armour." {Footnote: Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6, 9.} The shield, however, is not so huge as those of Aias, Hector, and Periphetes.

I can only conclude that Homer describes intermediate types of shield, as large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a reason to be given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the invention of late poets living in an age of circular bucklers, worn on the left arm, and these supposed late poets never introduce into the epics such bucklers.

What manner of military needs prompted the invention of the great Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by the addition of metal plating?