However we account for it, there was a long period in which Greek prehistoric and proto-historic dress was not the free-flowing costume which Homer describes, and which the appearance of safety pins, or fibulae, after 1400 B.C. attests. They are but rarely found in graves till the Dipylon age of Iron.
Now no critic has had the heart to say that the costume described by Homer, the loose chiton, was "written into" early epic lays (which originally knew it not), at the moment when it came into fashion in the sixth to fifth centuries. But criticism has taken a similar course in regard to Homeric armour. This armour, like Homeric male costume, is in essence, we shall show, that of the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. with the exception of the shield,—a huge body-covering shield in Homer (a shield probably of various shapes, circular, oblong, cylindrical or like a figure of 8),[7] suspended by a baldric (see fig. 2),—while in the seventh to fifth centuries we find a round or oval blazoned buckler worn on the left arm. While critics, following Reich el, attribute the Homeric body armour to Ionian interpolations of the seventh century, they have also followed him in not observing that Homeric body armour is not that of the seventh, but rather of the sixth to fifth centuries, as we shall prove.
We find, in art of the sixth to fifth centuries, or at least in the end of the sixth and the opening of the fifth centuries, such hauberks as Homer describes; they have variegated patterns of bronze scales; they are clasped down the front, and below are the bronze belt (zoster) and πτέρυγες, or mailed flaps.
On the other hand, the Ionic corslet of the seventh and earlier sixth century is made of plain plates of bronze, fastened at the sides—back-plate and breastplate—with a short projecting metallic rim to protect the hip-joints. There is no mailed kirtle, no decorated belt. The whole equipment, with the addition of mailed flaps to the plain corslet, is well rendered on a scaraboid gem.[8] In fact, this kind of plain corslet, with back-plate and breast-plate, fastened at the sides, is the regular Ionian or seventh to sixth century body armour, while the hauberk, of metal scales, or small plates, probably fixed on leather, begins to come in towards the end of the sixth century. Early in the fifth century, Polygnotus decorated the Lesche or lounge at Delphi with pictures of the Trojan affairs, mainly illustrating the Little Iliad, an Ionian cyclic poem attributed to Lesches. Among the pictures, says Pausanias, was represented an altar, and on it was a "bronze corslet, such as was worn of old, for now we seldom see them. It consisted of two pieces called guala, one to cover breast and belly, the other for the back, fastened by clasps." Unconsciously anticipating Reichel, Pausanias says that this piece of armour would be protection enough, "without a shield," as if a shield could simultaneously protect both back and front. "And so Homer represents Phorcys the Phrygian without a shield,"[9] "because he wore this kind of corslet."[10] Homer says that the spear of Aias burst the gualon of Phorcys, and the bronze let out the entrails.[11] The shield of Phorcys, if he wore one, must have been slung over his back or side at the moment. But in these two passages Homer seems to have in his mind a corslet of but two guala, back-plate and breast-plate fastened at the sides, like the eighth to sixth century corslet. If so, he knew both the corslet of two plates, fastened at the sides, and also the hauberk of scales or small plates of metal fastened in the centre of front and back. This is not impossible, for, as we shall prove, the corslet of metal plate was worn even in pre-Homeric Crete; while the hauberk is represented, if I am right, in art of the Dipylon, or pre-Dipylon period. Art in the late sixth century proves that both the corslet of back-plate and breast-plate, and the hauberk of small plates, fastening at back and in front, were worn.
Fig. 3.—Tirynthian Vase: Man in Hauberk