Homer and His Age

For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on The Armourof HomericHeroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white corsleted {Footnote: Journalof HellenicStudies, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 85.} Memnon figured in the Vases Peintsof the Duc de Luynes (plate xii.). Mr. Leaf suggests that the white colour represents "a corslet not of metal but of linen," and cites Iliad, II. 529, 5 30. "Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes" ( Anabasis, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop into the {Greek: streptos chitoon} of Iliad, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or scale armour; but we find no such object represented in Mycenaean art, which, of course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and it seems probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C. In the poem called Stasiotica, Alcaeus ( No. 5) speaks of his helmets, bronze greaves and corslets of linen ({Choorakes te neoi linoo}) as a defence against arrows.

Meanwhile a "bronze chiton" or corslet would turn spent arrows and spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such a bronze chitonmight stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.

I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior's breast or back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the Master of Sinclair (1708). {Footnote: Proceedings in Court Marshal held upon John, Master of Sinclair. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club. (Date of event, 1708.)} It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have only been sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was universal, by "modernising" later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.

A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced, without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the resistance of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured us that the victim was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due to inconsistent interpolation of corslets into the work of this post-Christian poet Quintus. {Footnote: I find a similar omission in the Chanson de Roland.}

Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus ( Iliad, III. 357, 358). The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV. 136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V. 99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which has traversed his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we ca

The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the victim's belly (XIII. 506-508). It is quite a surprise when a corslet does for once avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586-587). But Aias drives his spear through the corslet of Phorcys, into his belly (XVII 311-312). Thus the corslet scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects him against an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his corslet and the spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally the corslet saves a man when the spear has gone through the shield. The poet, therefore, sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the corslet covers, without mentioning the flimsy article that could not keep out a spear.

Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he could not explain away the thorexor corslet, on his original lines, as a mere general name for "a piece of armour"; and he inclined to think that jacks, with metal plates sewn on, did exist before the Ionian corslet. {Footnote: Homerische Waffen, pp. 93-94. 1901.} The gold breastplates of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by poets of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have filtered in, "during the course of successive modernisation, such as the oldest parts of the Iliadseem in many cases to have passed through," {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, i. p. 578.} though the new poets were, for all that, "conservatively tenacious of the old material." We have already pointed out the difficulty.

The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they were familiar, did stuff the Iliadfull of corslets unknown, by the theory, to the original poet, but familiar to rhapsodists living centuries later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not modernise the shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all uncritical poets do, did the shield fail to be unconsciously "brought up to date"? It seems probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge shield and rather feeble corslet were in vogue.

We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf, mainly following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We do not know their mechanism; they were composed of {Greek: guala}, presumed to be a backplate and a breastplate. The word gualonappears to mean a hollow, or the converse, something convex. We ca