Fig. 4.—Cretan Seal-impression, Minoan Armour.
Reichel argued from the absence of corslet, belt, greaves, and mailed kirtle in the few pieces of Aegean art known to him, that no such armour was used by Aegeans, and, again, that no such armour was known to the Achaeans. He was unacquainted with the scores of seal impressions which have been found at Haghia Triada in Crete.[24] The seals, it has been said, show a man in what Dr. Halbherr recognises as a heavy decorated plate corslet, with an obviously metallic belt, and below it a mailed kilt or apron, the Homeric mitrê. Dr. Mackenzie, too, recognises the armour.[25], It is unmistakable, and the corslet is so very wide, considering the wasp-like Mycenaean waist, that a spear could penetrate the side of it without wounding the wearer, a great puzzle of the critics when the fact occurs in Homer. (See fig. 4 A).
The armour is out of drawing, the man's head is given in profile, his armour is given full face. The same error is made by the painter of Menelaus fighting Hector on an archaic dish from Camirus. Euphorbus is lying on his back, but his corslet is given in full face, while his head is in profile (fig. 5). This is common in archaic Greek art. The arms of the man on the seal are not shown, just as the arms of women on some Laconian figurines are omitted.[26] There also occurs on the vase of Haghia Triada, a jovial figure in a very loose thick piece of armour, as some hold,[27] or "a Minoan cope," as others maintain. Beneath it is a short jutting ribbed kirtle, as in the seal. I am unable to decide between cope and cuirass in this instance,[28] but the bosses appear to be of hard material.
An easy mode of comparing various costumes and pieces of armour as illustrated in archaic and early Greek art, is to glance at Engelmann and Anderson's Pictorial Atlas of Iliad and Odyssey, 1895. It is prior to the Cretan discoveries, but is useful to students remote from collections of Greek works of art.
We shall first take the evidence of the black figure vases of the sixth century, and then that of the red figure vases which came in near the end of that age. In one (Atlas, fig. 43) the armour is of a sort more common by far in red figure vases. The corslet of a warrior has broad shoulder pieces, and is decorated with three stars, like "the decorated starry corslet" of Achilles.[29] These stars appear on an Assyrian corslet in Layard's Monuments. There is a belt and a mailed kirtle or mailed flaps; below appears the tight cypassis, not the flowing chiton.
Next, in a Corinthian black figure vase (Atlas, fig. 45) the charioteer wears the plain corslet of two plates with projecting rim (no zoster and mitrê); the dress is a tight jerkin. The women wear large mantles over what appear to be long tight-fitting chitons. In "Carving Meat" the cook and his servant wear the tight cypassis (fig. 51). In three combats (figs. 63, 64, 65) the warriors wear the cypassis, or are naked (65), but (64) one has the plate corslet with projecting rim. In the well-known archaic pyxis from Camirus (see fig. 5), Menelaus, Hector, and Euphorbus wear, over the cypassis, plain corslets, with a hatched projecting rim.
In "Death of Antilochus" (Part II. fig. 15) the plain plate corslet is worn over the flowing chiton, there is no mailed kirtle and belt. In the "Death of Achilles" (fig. 14) we have the plain corslet over the cypassis. In "Departure of Amphiaraus" the hero wears the plain plate corslet, and no mailed kirtle (fig. 73).