Homer and His Age

by Andrew Lang

The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the Algonquins and Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth century, as described by Champlain, give us the whole line of Mycenaean evolution of armour up to a certain point. Not only had they arrow-proof, body-covering shields of buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the Iroquois in battle, "they were struck amazed that two of their number should have been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields." We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman, describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage." {Footnote: Discovery of the Great IV, {misprint} 1869.} Golden, in his Five Nations, writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass made of pieces of wood joined together." {Footnote: Dix, Champlion {misprint}}

To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own. He says: "For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and material from tribe to tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from the traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some centres long rectangular shields, made from a single or double hide, were employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to 4 feet in width—large enough to cover the whole body. Among the Déné tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally made of closely-woven wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form (exact size not given).

"The coat armour was everywhere used, and varied in form and style in almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most commonly made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was formed of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind of shirt of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs. Another kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the long elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even below the knees and was sleeved to the elbow."

Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the use of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour as the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae, which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets these bowmen and users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use the metals. They fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs, cutting them into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on to cloth. {Footnote: Pausanias, i. 211. {misprint} 6.}

Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland have been ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on a garment of cloth, a neolithic chiton. However this may be, since Iroquois and Algonquins and Déné had some sort of woven, or plaited, or wooden, or buff corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that the Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the {Greek: linothoraex} (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois) to a sort of jack or jaseran with rings, scales, or plates, and thence to bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden breastplates of the Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet, there is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been evolved.

For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on The Armour of Homeric Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white corsleted {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 85.} Memnon figured in the Vases Peints of the Duc de Luynes (plate xii.). Mr. Leaf suggests that the white colour represents "a corslet not of metal but of linen," and cites Iliad, II. 529, 5 30. "Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes" (Anabasis, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop into the {Greek: streptos chitoon} of Iliad, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or scale armour; but we find no such object represented in Mycenaean art, which, of course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and it seems probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C. In the poem called Stasiotica, Alcaeus (No. 5) speaks of his helmets, bronze greaves and corslets of linen ({Choorakes te neoi linoo}) as a defence against arrows.

Meanwhile a "bronze chiton" or corslet would turn spent arrows and spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such a bronze chiton might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.

I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior's breast or back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the Master of Sinclair (1708). {Footnote: Proceedings in Court Marshal held upon John, Master of Sinclair. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club. (Date of event, 1708.)} It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have only been sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was universal, by "modernising" later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.

A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced, without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the resistance of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured us that the victim was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due to inconsistent interpolation of corslets into the work of this post-Christian poet Quintus. {Footnote: I find a similar omission in the Chanson de Roland.}

Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus (Iliad, III. 357, 358). The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV. 136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V. 99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which has traversed his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through the "bronze chiton" of Alcathöus (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons these lines "probably an interpolation to turn the linen chiton, the rending of which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we ask why, if an editor or rhapsodist went through the Iliad introducing corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their absence because they are not mentioned?