[CHAPTER VIII]
MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR.
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 the Iliad were 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 body—covering shields of Aegean art, but not the 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 the zoster, or mailed belt, and the mitrê, 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 the Achaeans 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 the Iliad and Odyssey.