Mr. Leaf therefore conceives that "during the prime of Mykene fashion was dominated by a non-Hellenic influence," perhaps Oriental. Bodices and separate flounced skirts were in, "but for some reason which we cannot expect to guess, fashion returned, at the end of the Mykenaean age, to the older and simpler dress" (the Homeric), "which held its ground till classical times."[6] The usual explanation is that the fibulae and the pinned peplos were brought in from the north by Achaean invaders; in the north the fibulae had long been common;[7] and that the style of costume persisted continuously into historic times, being the familiar classical Greek dress.
Fig. 9—Costume of Women—Tirynthian Vase.
Now undoubtedly the fibula, and therefore the unsewn and unshaped female attire, did come in at the close of the Aegean or Mycenaean period in Greece; but, as far as I can interpret the art of very old Tirynthian and some Dipylon vases, there was an early post-Homeric period wherein women adopted the short hood-capes, the tight waists, the heavy skirts, and the princess frock.[8] This attire more resembles the Aegean than the Homeric and Hellenic. The "hood-cape" of Tirynthian art may conceivably be the κρήδεμνον, καλύπτρα or κάλυμμα of Homer; but if so, it reveals below it a waist of more than Aegean tightness, not the belted peplos. Such are the characteristics of Dipylon art, and of Tirynthian art which may have arisen before 900 B.C. It is hardly possible that if, in that age, women wore the loose Homeric peplos, the artists should have represented them with impossibly narrow waists, with the bosom fully displayed, and with heavy skirts. The women of this dark age, as far as art can enlighten us, had broken away from, or at all events are not wearing, the Homeric peplos.
This is, at least, my private interpretation of the Dipylon and the Tirynthian representation. But it is offered with diffidence, and is not shared by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the British School of Athens. He "does not believe that the Dipylon women's dress is necessarily a tight one," and attributes the wasp waists to the limited skill of the early artist, thinking that if he had to draw a woman in a loose flowing dress he would still give her a tiny waist, because a small waist is one of the conspicuous points in the female figure. In the effort to give as much information as possible he would draw the small waist even if it were concealed by a loose dress. The primitive artist draws not from models, but from mental images.
There is much truth in this; for example, the ladies in a palaeolithic rock-painting[9] have very slim waists, clearly exaggerated, above skirts with a crescentine scoop at the bottom. But the primitive artist certainly draws under the domination of a convention which differs in different places. The woman whose figure is repeated in the clay disk from Phaestus[10] has no more waist than the stout person in a princess frock from Tiryns. The Dipylon artists may be continuing the Aegean convention of the wasp waist; though the designer of the princess frock is as candid as the Phaestos artist. Thus the reader must interpret the Dipylon waist as he pleases.
We next reach the "archaic" art of, say, the seventh to sixth centuries. The chief article of female dress, as described by Homer, was the peplos, "a square or rectangular piece of material which," like the men's outer mantle, "could be used for various purposes." It was fastened by pins or brooches (περόναι, ἐνεταί), and the περόνη was sometimes a fibula or safety pin, the cover adorned by art, as in the case of the περόνη of Odysseus (Od. xix.). But when (Iliad, v. 425) Athene mockingly tells Zeus that the wounded Aphrodite must have scratched her hand, while caressing some Achaean woman, on her περόνη, the term "safety pin," or fibula, does not apply. We think rather of one of the long sharp stiletto-like pins found in Egyptian deposits of from about 1450 to 1200 B.C. and also at Enkomi in Cyprus, and at Sparta in the Orthia sanctuary from 900 to 500 B.C.[11] Fibulae of the same date also occur. These great pins had ribbed handles, and below the handle was a perforation or a metallic loop.[12] Now very long pins, also with ribbed handles, but without the aperture in the middle, fasten the peplos of one of the Fates on the Francis vase, which Mr. Evans dates in "the seventh century," but Mr. Walters—from the characters in the inscriptions on the vase—dates about 570-550 B.C.[13] The Spartan evidence for the pin and fibulae covers the later range of dates.