Homer and His Age

by Andrew Lang

{Illustration: FIG. 6. FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE}

The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the Homeric shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily be traced. The nature of the attack expected may be inferred from the nature of the defence employed. Body-covering shields were, obviously, at first, defences against showers of arrows tipped with stone. "In the earlier Mycenaean times the arrow-head of obsidian alone appears," as in Mycenaean Grave IV. In the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is usually of bronze. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 206.} No man going into battle naked, without body armour, like the Mycenaeans (if they had none), could protect himself with a small shield, or even with a round buckler of twenty-six inches in diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand, where man singled out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the warriors had body armour, or even when they had not, a small shield sufficed; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the spear-throwing aborigines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and arrows), who mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the other hand, the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the Iroquois, about 1610, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no missiles but arrows, and their leather shield was precisely the {Greek: amphibrotae aspis} of Homer, "covering the whole of a man." It is curious to see, in contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields on Red Indian shoulders!

In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins against Iroquois (1610-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the Iroquois stockade, which is defended by archers, sheltering under huge shields shaped like the Mycenaean "tower" shield, though less cylindrical; in fact, more like the shield of the fallen hunter depicted on the dagger of Mycenae. These Algonquin shields partially cover the sides as well as the front of the warrior, who stoops behind them, resting the lower rim of the shield on the ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the top, much like that of Achilles {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii p. 605} in Mr. Leaf's restoration? The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in shape and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo hide, {Footnote: Les Voyages de Sr. de Champlain, Paris, 1620, f. 22: "rondache de cuir bouili, qui est d'un animal, comme le boufle."} good against stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked, like the unshielded archers on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The description of the Algonquin shields by Champlain, when compared with his drawings, suggests that we cannot always take artistic representations as exact. In his designs only a few Algonquins and one Iroquois carry the huge shields; the unshielded men are stark naked, as on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the Iroquois, like the Algonquins, "carried arrow-proof shields" and "a sort of armour woven of cotton thread"—Homer's {Greek: linothoraex} (Iliad, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only one of Champlain's drawings {Footnote: Dix's Champlain, p. 113. Appleton, New York, 1903. Laverdière's Champlain, vol. iv., plate opposite p. 85 (1870).} (Fig. 8).

These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men exposed, not to spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As spears came in for missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not wholly go out, but the noble warriors preferred spear and sword. {Footnote: Cf. Archilochus, 3.} Mr. Ridgeway erroneously says that "no Achaean warrior employs the bow for war." {Footnote: Early Age of Greece, i. 301.} Teucer, frequently, and Meriones use the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they resort to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in Iliad, Book X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting as a spy; in the Odyssey his skill as an archer is notorious, but he would not pretend to equal famous bowmen of an older generation, such as Heracles and Eurytus of OEchalia, whose bow he possessed but did not take to Troy. Philoctetes is his master in archery. {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 219-222.}

{Illustration: FIG. 7. FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE}

The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who desired to come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin, Falkirk, Halidon Hill and many another field proved the error.

There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against heavy showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says that, in Homer, "we do not hear of BODIES of archers, of arrows darkening the air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare." {Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. 305.} These precise phrases are not used by Homer; but, nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in his battle pieces. The effects are not often noticed, because, in Homer, helmet, shield, corslet, zoster, and greaves, as a rule prevent the shafts from harming the well-born, well-armed chiefs; the nameless host, however, fall frequently. When Hector came forward for a parley (Iliad, III. 79), the Achaens "kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took unconcernedly. Teucer shoots nine men in Iliad, VIII. 297-304. In XI. 85 the shafts ({Greek: belea}) showered and the common soldiers fell—{misprint} being arrows as well as thrown spears. {Footnote: Iliad, IV. 465; XVI. 668, 678.} Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely, they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is wounded by an arrow. Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in his thigh—archer unknown. {Footnote: Iliad, XI. 809, 810.} Meriones, though an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body of Harpalion (XIII. 650). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as "bowmen" (XIV. 479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing, hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great body-covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue in Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone arrow-heads, but was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather. In a later age the bow was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and consequently large shields went out, after the close of the Mycenaean age, and round parrying bucklers came into use.

The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases show even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the arrow nock is held between the thumb and forefinger—an ineffectual release. {Footnote: C. J. Longman, Archery. Badminton Series.} The archers in early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old England; the bow is usually small—a child's weapon; the string is often drawn only to the breast, as by Pandarus in the Iliad (IV. i 23). By 730 B.C. the release with three fingers, our western release, had become known. {Footnote: Leaf Iliad, vol. i. p. 585.}

{Illustration: FIG. 8.—ALGONQUIN CORSLET. From Laverdiere, Oeuvres de Champlain, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870.}

The course of evolution seems to be: (1) the Mycenaean prime of much archery, no body armour (?); huge leather "man-covering" shields are used, like those of the Algonquins; (2) the same shields strengthened with metal, light body armour-thin corslets—and archery is frequent, but somewhat despised (the Homeric age); (3) the parrying shield of the latest Mycenaean age (infantry with body armour); (4) the Ionian hoplites, with body armour and small circular bucklers.