“And from the close-woven linen the liquid oil runs off,” and in Iliad, 596, the youths in the dancing place on the shield of Achilles are described as wearing χιτῶνας ἐϋννήτους, ἦκα στίλβοντας ἐλαίῳ, “well spun, shining softly with oil.”
The epithet στρέπτος applied to the χιτών[33] requires comment; it was taken by Aristarchus, the grammarian, to mean a coat of chain mail. There is no evidence to show that such a piece of defensive armour was known to the early Greeks, and we find no reference to it until Roman times; there is, therefore, no justification for the inference that στρέπτος χιτών in Homer means a coat of mail.
The word στρέπτος means primarily “twisted,” and could be applied to a coarse kind of linen whose texture showed very clearly the separate threads of which it was woven; but other uses of the word in Homer, and the second of the two passages in which it is applied to a χιτών, suggest a different interpretation. In Odyssey, ii., 426, in the description of the rigging of a ship, the expression εὐστρέπτοισι βοεῦσιν occurs. The adjective here can very well retain its simple meaning—“well-twisted”; the noun can mean nothing else but “ropes of ox-hide”—that is to say, the whole expression will signify ropes made of well-twisted thongs of leather.
The passage referred to in the Iliad runs as follows:—
δῆσε δ᾽ ὀπίσσω χεῖρας εὐτμήτοισιν ἱμᾶσι
τοὺς αὐτοὶ φορέεσκον ἐπὶ στρεπτοῖσι χιτῶσι.
[Iliad, xxi., 30.]
The subject is the sacrifice of the twelve boys at the funeral of Patroclus.
Achilles bound their hands behind them with the well-cut thongs which they wore on their twisted chitons. The word ἱμᾶσι implies leather, and the only kind of chiton which would be likely to have leather thongs attached to it would be a jerkin made of leather, perhaps plaited in some way and fastened by means of leather laces. Such a garment might be worn in war under a metal breast-plate, or if very stoutly made might even serve as defensive armour, without the addition of any corslet; in any case, it would afford more protection than an ordinary linen chiton such as was worn by those engaged in the pursuits of peace.
Another garment worn by men is the ζῶμα, which appears at first sight to mean simply a girdle, but in one or two passages signifies something more. The word is obviously connected with the verb ζώννυμι, “to gird on,” and means a “thing girt on.” The word might well apply to a girdle, but it might also be used of anything put on round the waist, and so of a waist-cloth; there can be little doubt that it has this meaning in Iliad, xxiii., 683, where a description is being given of the preparations for a boxing match; and a few lines further on the participle ζωσαμένω, applied to the wrestlers, in all probability means putting on their waist-cloths. In other passages where the word occurs, its meaning is less obvious, although here too there is nothing to render the same interpretation impossible. In Iliad, iv., 186, a weapon is described as not inflicting a mortal wound: