Homer and His Age Part 10

It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and cla.s.sical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often of great size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by belts; and, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and _zosters_. There is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a _targe_ should not also wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened; the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed.

To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the _Iliad_, are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.]

There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold ornaments, which could only belong to shields, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 237.] were found, but bronze shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep out bronze-headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.

Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the circ.u.mstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists, we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.] At other times they are said to introduce recklessly part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets, while sternly excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of very late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that moment.

Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round buckler." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circ.u.mstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the _Iliad_. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as one iron spear point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in deference to tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter of greaves and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind tradition to find Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?

These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these theories cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the theory, are in the iron age, and are, of course, familiar with iron weapons; yet, in conservative deference to tradition, they keep them absolutely out of their rhapsodies. They are equally familiar with bronze corslets, so, reckless this time of tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies which are centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar with small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to the traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent theories which we have been examining is easily discovered. The scholars who hold these opinions see that several things in the Homeric picture of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian tradition, that there could be no _long_ epic in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much the greater part of the _Iliad_, must necessarily, they say, be the work of continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which, they a.s.sume, can only be explained as the result of a compilation of the patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many men in many lands and ages made the Epic, their contributions cannot but be marked by the inevitable changes in manners, customs, beliefs, implements, laws, weapons, and so on, which could not but arise in the long process of time. Yet traces of change in law, religion, manners, and customs are scarcely, if at all, to be detected; whence it logically follows that a dozen generations of irresponsible minstrels and vagrant reciters were learned, conscientious, and staunchly conservative of the archaic tone.

Their erudite conservatism, for example, induced them, in deference to the traditions of the bronze age, to describe all weapons as of bronze, though many of the poets were living in an age of weapons of iron. It also prompted them to describe all shields as made on the far-away old Mycenaean model, though they were themselves used to small circular bucklers, with a bracer and a grip, worn on the left arm.

But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets deserted them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays, they eagerly introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves--things of the ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig stating, on the same page, that in the matter of usages "the epic poets shunned, as far as possible, all that was recent," and also that for fear of puzzling their military audiences they did the reverse: "they probably kept account of the arms and armour of their own day." [Footnote: La _Question Mycenienne_, p. 50. _Cf_. Note I.] Now the late poets, on this showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always speaking of bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the other hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by talking of enormous _targes_, slung round the neck.

All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the a.s.sumption that the _Iliad_ _must_ be a hotch-potch of many ages. If we a.s.sume that, on the whole, it is the work of one age, we see that the poet describes the usages which obtained in his own day. The dead are cremated, not, as in the Mycenaean prime, inhumed. The shield has been strengthened to meet bronze, not stone-tipped, arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they are conservative archaeologists. In that case, though they burn, they would have made their heroes bury their dead, as they did at Mycenas.

They do not introduce iron swords and spears, as they must do, if, being late poets, they keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they speak of huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists, then, on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves because they are also reckless innovators.

They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a single "moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from the Mycenaean prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Mycenaean prime by a foreign conquest, a revolution, and the years in which the foreign conquerors acquired the language of their subjects.

In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was time enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime to be evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the descriptions of culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all the facts. The other hypothesis, that the _Iliad_ was begun near the Mycenaean prime and was continued throughout four or five centuries, cannot, first, explain how the _Iliad_ was _composed_, and, next, it wanders among apparent contradictories and through a maze of inconsistencies.

THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE

We are far from contending that it is always possible to understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we have never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases were clear enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I do not, for example, profess to be sure of what happened when Pandarus shot at Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden buckles of the _zoster_ were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow alighted upon the firm _zoster_; through the wrought _zoster_ it sped, and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through the _mitre_ he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it pa.s.sed on even through this," and grazed the hero's flesh (_Iliad_, IV. I 32 seq.). Menelaus next says that "the glistering _zoster_ in front stayed the dart, and the _zoma_ beneath, and the _mitre_ that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then the surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering _zoster_ and the _zoma_, and the _mitre_ beneath that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).

Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the corslet was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and the middle of the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the plates met and the _zoster_ was buckled at the side); that the _zoster_, a mailed belt, buckled just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that the arrow went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through the place where the plates of the corslet met, and then through the _mitre_, a piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the nature of this _mitre_ and of the _zoma_ I do not know. Was the _mitre_ a separate article or a continuation of the breastplate, lower down, struck by a dropping arrow?

In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the _zoma_ means the waist of the cuira.s.s which is covered by the _zoster_, and has the upper edge of the _mitre_ or plated ap.r.o.n beneath it fastened round the warrior's body. ... This view is strongly supported by all the archaic vase paintings I have been able to find." [Footnote: _Journal of h.e.l.lenic studies, vol. iv. pp. 74,75_.] We see a "corslet with a projecting rim"; that rim is called zoma and holds the _zoster_. "The hips and upper part of the thighs were protected either by a belt of leather, sometimes plated, called the _mitre_, or else only by the lower part of the _chiton_, and this corresponds exactly with Homeric description."

[Footnote: _Journal of h.e.l.lenic_ Studies, _pp. 76, 77_.]

At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we have seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry; that "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed that the old warriors were muscular enough to wear circular shields as great as those in the vase of Aristonothos, already described. [Footnote: _Ibid., vol.

iv p. 285_.]

On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple of Reichel. But as to the _mitre_, he rejects Helbig's and Mr. Ridgeway's opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in front and very narrow behind. Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Ridgeway mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary.

[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I_.] The _zoster_ is now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (_zoma_), so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a _mitre_, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic _mitre_ is just as much an intruder into the armament of the _Epos_ as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr.

Leaf suggests, first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the introduction of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic _mitre_" of Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and three inches behind).

"Only as technical skill improved could the final stage, that of the elaborate cuira.s.s, be attained."

This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While arrows were flying thick, as they do fly in the _Iliad_, men would not reject body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly dest.i.tute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when, if they had skill enough to make a metallic _mitre_, they could not have been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the _linoth.o.r.ex_ (like the Iroquois cotton _th.o.r.ex_), and next, as a rule, superseded that with the bronze _th.o.r.ex_, while retaining the huge shield, because the bronze _th.o.r.ex_ was so inadequate to its purpose of defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming to the shock with heavy spears, and as the bronze _th.o.r.ex_ really could sometimes keep out an arrow, they reduced the size of their shields, and retained surface enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge of the sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I cannot pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the _mitre_ and _zoster_ really were, beyond being guards of the stomach and lower part of the trunk.

HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS

No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in Mycenaean graves. A quant.i.ty of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened leather caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band of the same round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of bronze? Spata and the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the Enkomi ivories show similar headgear. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 196, 197.]

This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in _Iliad_, Book X., in the account of the hasty arraying of two spies in the night of terror after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the better. In these circ.u.mstances alone the heroes of the Iliad are unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets, and bronze greaves. [Dislocated Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, x.x.x. pp._ 209-215.] [Footnote: _Iliad, X._ 255-265.]

The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist, who knew that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in Agamemnon's time, but that leather caps with boars' tusks were in fashion; while again, as we shall see, he is said to know nothing about heroic costume (cf. The _Doloneia_). As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs nowhere else in Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice--a hurried council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of two spies, who wish to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's evidence as to the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks testifies to a survival of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets, not to his own minute antiquarian research.

GREAVES

Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41).

But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of greaves?

Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean grave at Enkomi (Tomb XV.), _accompanied_ by _an early type_ of _bronze_ dagger, while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in the Balkan peninsula at Gla.s.sinavc. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute,_ pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.] Thus all Homer's description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and cannot be cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method" of Dr. Reichel.

A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while the men of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the ground erect on the spikes of the b.u.t.ts" (X. 153). Aristotle mentions that this was still the usage of the Illyrians in his day. [Footnote: _Poctica_, 25.] Though the word for the spike in the b.u.t.t (_sauroter_) does not elsewhere occur in the _Iliad_, the practice of sticking the spears erect in the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean upon their shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears are planted by their sides." No b.u.t.t-spikes have been found in graves of the Mycenaean prime. The _sauroter_ was still used, or still existed, in the days of Herodotus. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.]

On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear of four centuries--that view we hope to have shown to be a ma.s.s of inconsistencies--but describes a state of military equipment in advance of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that of the late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar with some uses of iron, of which, as we shall see, scarcely any has been found in Mycenaean graves of the central period, save in the shape of rings. Homer never mentions rings of any metal.

CHAPTER IX

BRONZE AND IRON

Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they give, with the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious account of the contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is employed in the making of weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &c.); iron is employed (and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such as knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use an axle tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and pastoral life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the poets; it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields epithets indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn endurance. These epithets are more frequent in the Odyssey and the "later" Books of the Iliad than in the "earlier" Books of the Iliad; but, as articles made of iron, the Odyssey happens to mention only one set of axes, which is spoken of ten times--axes and adzes as a cla.s.s--and "iron bonds," where "iron" probably means "strong," "not to be broken." [Footnote: In these circ.u.mstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written thus: "In Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in comparison with bronze, but the proportion is greater in the Odyssey (25 iron, 80 bronze) than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279 bronze).--Monro, Odyssey, vol.

ii. p. 339. These statistics obviously do not prove that, at the date of the composition of the Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more common, or that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the _Iliad_ was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal: the _Iliad_ is a military poem, while the _Odyssey_ is an epic of peace; consequently the _Iliad_ is much more copious in references to bronze than the _Odyssey_ has any occasion to be. Wives are far more frequently mentioned in the Odyssey than in the _Iliad_, but n.o.body will argue that therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading, when we remember that ten out of the twenty references are only _one_ reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also proposed to leave six references to iron in the _Iliad_ out of the reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted without detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic formula descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as bronze, gold, and women. The existence of the formula proves familiarity with iron, and to excise it merely because it contradicts a theory is purely arbitrary.--Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.]. The statement of facts given here is much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze and iron in Homer. [Footnote: Helbig, _Das Homerischi Epos_, pp. 330, 331.

_1887_.] Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic there is much more frequent mention of iron _implements_ than of iron _weapons of war_." He then gives examples, which we produce later, and especially remarks on what Achilles says when he offers a ma.s.s of iron as a prize in the funeral games of Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will serve for the purposes of the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech from the son of Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the military uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in vogue while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of Achilles are appropriate and intelligible.

The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose that the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is an age when iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for armour, or for swords or spears, which must be of excellent temper, without great weight in proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in Homer for some knives, which are never said to be used in battle (not even for dealing the final stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the _misericorde_), for axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be thick and weighty behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the shepherd and ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads, and so forth.

As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us, these relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages of Mycenaean culture which are represented in the _tholos_ of Vaphio and the graves, earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the later Mycenaean graves iron is found only in the form of finger rings (iron rings were common in late Greece). [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.] Iron was scarce in the Cypro-Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with a carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps of iron, one of them apparently the head of a club, were found in Schliemann's "Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords, spear-heads, knives, and axes are all of bronze in the age called "Mycenaean." But we do not know whether iron _implements_ may not yet be found in the sepulchres of _Thetes_, and other poor and landless men. The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of bronze.

Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership of "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour" (in the smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula for describing a man of wealth. [Footnote: _Iliad_, VI. 48; IX. 365-366; X. 379; XI. 133; _Odyssey_, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy?

[Footnote: _Iliad_, VII. 472-475.] Athene, disguised as Mentes, is carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for copper. The poets are certainly not describing an age in which only a man of wealth might indulge in the rare and extravagant luxury of an iron ring: iron was a common commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves, bronze, and other such matters. Common as it was, Homer never once mentions its use for defensive armour, or for swords and spears.

Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will cut his own throat. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVIII. 34.] But no knife is ever used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats of victims (see _Iliad_, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said to be of iron, in this last pa.s.sage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI.

844.] It is the _knife_ of Achilles that is called "the iron," and on "the iron" perish the cattle in _Iliad_, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf says that by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of small size." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, xxiii. 30, Note.] This is incorrect; the Odyssey speaks of _great axes_ habitually made of iron. [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391.] But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon, used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III.

271-292.

The only two specimens of _weapons_ named by Homer as of iron are one arrow-head, used by Pandarus, [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 123.] and one mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithous. To fight with an iron mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The Mace man." [Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.] The case is mentioned by Nestor as curious and unusual.

Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron _ca.s.se tete_ in a pleasant way. Since he wrote his _Companion to the Iliad_, 1902, he has become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro, Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Bla.s.s, that the origin of our Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered"

freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this pa.s.sage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus."

[Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.] If Pisistratus was pleased with the ancestral portrait, n.o.body has a right to interfere, but we need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).

Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, [Footnote: Iliad, XXIII. 850.] and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey.

But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but _peaceful implements_.

As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron, in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.