Homer and His Age Part 7

The shield ([Greek: aspis]), we are told by followers of Reichel, was only worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots, charioteers, and squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But this can scarcely be true, for all the comrades of Diomede had the shield ([Greek: aspis], _Iliad_, X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted bowman, were shield-bearers ([Greek: aspistaon laon], _Iliad_, IV.

90), and some of them held their shields ([Greek: sakae]) in front of Pandarus when he took a treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The whole host could not have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the chariot was not indispensable to the _ecuyer_ or shield-bearing man.

The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as we now prove.

No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot; the men with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The only modern peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield of the Mycenaean size and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses and chariots, as we shall show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such as the Khita and Egyptians, who fought from chariots, carried _small_ shields of various forms, as in the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed with spears, and the bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with arrows from their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who have no bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance. [Footnote: Maspero, _Hist. Ancienne_, ii. p. 225.]. Egyptians and Khita, who fight from chariots, use _small_ bucklers, whence it follows that war chariots were not invented, or, at least, were not retained in use, for the purpose of giving mobility to men wearing gigantic shields, under which they could not hurry from point to point. War chariots did not cease to be used in Egypt, when men used small shields.

Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while there is no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where they are to lie in ambush (Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield was so heavy as to render a chariot necessary, would Homer make Hector trudge a considerable distance under shield, while Achilles, under shield, sprints thrice round the whole circ.u.mference of Troy? Helbig notices several other cases of long runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong, when he said that the huge shield made the use of the war chariot necessary, or the poet is "late"; he is a man who never saw a large shield like Hector's, and, though he speaks of such shields, he thinks that men could walk and run under them. When men did walk or run under shield, or ride, if they ever rode, they would hang it over the left side, like the lion-hunters on the famous inlaid dagger of Mycenae, [Footnote: For the chariots, _cf_. Reichel, _Homerische Waffen_, 120_ff_. Wien, 1901.] or the warrior on the chessman referred to above (p. 111).

Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the _Iliad_, has the largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot have been circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the battle with the Wooers in the _Odyssey;_ yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots, yet use small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never own a chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel.

Aias and his shield we meet in _Iliad_, VII. 206-220. "He clothed himself upon his flesh in _all_ his armour" ([Greek: teuchea]), to quote Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only _describes_ his shield: his "towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his home in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze."

The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an age of leather shields the Currier is still the shield-maker, though now the shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition regarded the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a local hero of great influence, display this shield as the badge of the AEginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed, or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the _waist_, or pinched--in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield; the same device occurs on a Mycenaean ring from AEgina in the British Museum.

[Footnote: Evans, _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_, xiii. 213-216.]

In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six layers of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear of Aias went through the circular (or "every way balanced") huge shield of Hector, and through his corslet and _chiton_, but Hector had doubled himself up laterally ([Greek: eklinthae], VII. 254), and was not wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his neck; Hector replied with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the shield of Aias, "on the boss," whether that means a mere ornament or k.n.o.b, or whether it was the genuine boss--which is disputed. Aias broke in the shield of Hector with another stone; and the gentle and joyous pa.s.sage of arms was stopped.

The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that "cover all the body of a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or ornamental k.n.o.bs of tin, and the centre was of black cya.n.u.s (XI.

31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The description is not intelligible, and I do not discuss it.

A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his shield"

(XI. 424-425), not an easy thing to do, if shields covered the whole body to the feet; but, when a hero was leaping from his chariot (as in this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield.

The ancient Irish romances tell of a _gae bulg_, a spear held in the warrior's toes, and jerked up under the shield of his enemy! Shields could be held up on high, in an attack on a wall garrisoned by archers (XII. 139), the great Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted.

The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze helmets, nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf suspects that this is a piece of "false archaism," but we do not think that early poets in an uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is aware that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some have longer and some shorter spears (XIV. 370-377); but this does not prove that the shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the shield of a short father, or _versa_.

A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which proves how large it was: "it reached to his feet." This accident of tripping occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have happened to Hector, whose shield reached from neck to ankles. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XV. 645-646.]

Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew n.o.body whose armour would fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus), he could, however, make shift with the tower-like shield of Aias, he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration 1: "THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS"]

The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the heroes carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body and legs. If Homer means, by the epithets already cited, "of good circle" and "every way equal," that some shields of these vast dimensions were circular, we have one example in early Greek art which corroborates his description.

This is "the vase of Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed to be of the seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley is being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has represented their shields as covering their right sides, probably for the purpose of showing their devices or blazons. _Their_ shields are small round bucklers. On the ship are three warriors whose shields, though circular, _cover THE BODY from CHIN TO ANKLES_, as in Homer. One shield bears a bull's head; the next has three crosses; the third blazon is a crab. [Footnote: Mon. _dell_. Inst., is. pl. 4.]

Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It is not usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is ignorant of anything. He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with the Phaeacian presents; he ties it up with a cunning knot; there are no rings named among the things wrought by Hephaestus, nor among the offerings of the Wooers of Penelope. [Footnote: Helbig citing Odyssey, VIII. 445-448; _Iliad_, XVIII. 401; Odyssey, xviii. 292-301.]

But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which lasted to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to the very late AEginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum, and appear again in the earliest dawn of the cla.s.sical age and in a Cyclic poem, it is plain that all the expansionists lived in one, and that a most peculiar _ringless_ age. This view suits our argument to a wish, but it is not credible that rings and seals and engraved stones, so very common in Mycenaean and later times, should have vanished wholly in the Homeric time. The poet never mentions them, just as Shakespeare never mentions a thing so familiar to him as tobacco. How often are finger rings mentioned in the whole ma.s.s of Attic tragic poetry? We remember no example, and instances are certainly rare: Liddell and Scott give none.

Yet the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals.

Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he mentions none; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by no poet of war, if they existed.

Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular and covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's descriptions.

Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these shields are worn by men aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort of shield when aboard ship and another when fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel were not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted to draw what he sees; and why should he give the men in the other ship or boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the adverse vessel with large, purely imaginary shields? [Footnote: Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. pp. 313-314.] It is not in the least "probable," as Helbig suggests, that the artist is shirking the trouble of drawing the figure.

Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase was painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not understand how to depict them. [Footnote: _Homerische Waffen_, p. 47.] But he depicted them very well as regards the men in the galley, save that, for obvious aesthetic reasons, he chose to a.s.sume that the men in the galley were left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire being to display the blazons of both parties. [Footnote: See the same arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, _Denkmaler_, iii. p. 1945.]

We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both "reached to the feet" and were circular, existed in his time (the seventh century), so that possibly they may have existed in Homer's time and survived into the age of small bucklers. Tyrtaeus (late seventh century), as Helbig remarks, speaks of "a _wide_ shield, covering thighs, shins, breast, and shoulders." [Footnote: _Tyrtaeus_, xi. 23; Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. p. 315, Note 2.]

Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of Aristonothos.

Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a practicable shield in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may have meant large circular shields. On the Dodwell pyxis of 650 to 620 B.C., a man wears an oval shield, covering him from the base of the neck to the ankles. He wears it on his left arm. [Footnote: Walters, _Ancient Pottery_, p. 316.]

Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is not a notice in the _Iliad_, unless there be a hint to that effect in the accounts of heroes running, walking considerable distances, and "stepping lightly" under shields, supposed, by the critics, to be of crushing weight. In such pa.s.sages the poet may be carried away by his own _verve_, or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of exertions beyond those of the poet's contemporaries, as he often tells us that, in fact, the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific military writer; and in the epic poetry of all other early races very gross exaggeration is permitted, as in the [blank s.p.a.ce] the old Celtic romances, and, of course, the huge epics of India. In Homer "the skill of the poet makes things impossible convincing," Aristotle says; and it is a critical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always _au pied de la lettre_. He seems, undeniably, to have large body-covering shields present to his mind as in common use.

Small shields of the Greek historic period are "unknown to Homer," Mr.

Leaf says, "with a very few curious exceptions," [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.] detected by Reichel in Book X. 15 [Footnote: _Ibid,_ vol. i. p. 569, fig. 2.], where Diomede's men sleep with their heads resting on their shields, whereas a big-bellied Mycenaean shield rises, he says, too high for a pillow. But some Mycenzean shields were perfectly flat; while, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenzean huge shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this pa.s.sage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an obscure text in which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride or drive the horses of Rhesus. They _could_ ride, as every one must see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True, the shielded hero could neither put his shield at his back nor in front of him when he rode; but he could hang it sidewise, when it would cover his left side, as in the early Middle Ages (1060-1160 A.D.).

The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not prove the shield to be small; the shield hung by the belt (_telamon_) from the shoulder. [Footnote: On the other side, see Reichel, _Homerische Waffen_, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We have replied to his arguments above.]

So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with vast body-covering shields; that such shields were suspended by a baldric, not worn on the left arm; that they were made of layers of hide, plated with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall, doubtless oblong, "like a tower," possibly it was semi-cylindrical.

Whether the epithets denoting roundness refer to circular shields or to the double _targe_, g-shaped, of Mycenaean times is uncertain.

We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not know small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields, whereas, from the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were not in use (disregarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on which they appear conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are we? Either we have a harmonious picture of war from a very ancient date of large shields, or late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the question. Homer did not live in or describe the Mycenaean prime, with its stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act so inconsistently? Why were they ignorant of small circular shields, which they saw every day? Or why, if they knew them, did they not introduce them in the poems, which, we are told, they were filling with non-Mycenaean greaves and corslets?

This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the advocates of the theory that the _Iliad_ is a patchwork of many generations. "Late" poets, if really late, certainly in every-day life knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm, and huge body-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew, and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and greaves. The theory of critics is that late poets introduced the bronze corslets and greaves with which they were familiar into the poems, but scrupulously abstained from alluding to the equally familiar small shields. Why are they so recklessly anachronistic and "up-to-date"

with the corslets and greaves, and so staunchly but inconsistently conservative about keeping the huge shields?

Mr. Leaf explains thus: "The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as compared with iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the poems are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean age"--which we are the last to deny. "Is it that the poets are deliberately trying to present the conditions of an age anterior to their own? or are they depicting the circ.u.mstances by which they are surrounded--circ.u.mstances which slowly change during the period of the development of the Epos? Cauer decides for the latter alternative, _the only one which is really conceivable_ [Footnote: Then how is the alleged archaeology of the poet of Book X. conceivable?] in an age whose views are in many ways so nave as the poems themselves prove them to have been." [Footnote: _Cla.s.sical Review, ix. pp. 463, 464._]

Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no sculptor, in a naf, uncritical age, ever represents in art anything but what he sees daily in costume, customs, weapons, armour, and ways of life.

Mr. Leaf, however, on the other hand, occasionally chides pieces of deliberate archaeological pedantry in the poets, in spite of his opinion that they are always "depicting the circ.u.mstances by which they are surrounded." But as huge man-covering shields are _not_ among the circ.u.mstances by which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why do they depict them? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument departs from the statement that only one theory is "conceivable,"

namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, and we are introduced to a new proposition. "Or rather we must recognise everywhere a compromise between two opposing principles: the singer, on the one hand, has to be conservatively tenacious of the old material which serves as the substance of his song; on the other hand, he has to be vivid and actual in the contributions which he himself makes to the common stock." [Footnote: _Ibid._, ix. pp. 463, 464.]

The conduct of such singers is so weirdly inconsistent as not to be easily credible. But probably they went further, for "it is possible that the allusions" to the corslet "may have been introduced in the course of successive modernisation such as the oldest parts of the _Iliad_ seem in many cases to have pa.s.sed through. But, in fact, _Iliad_, XI. 234 is the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest strata, so far as we can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates _th.o.r.ex_ 'shield.'" [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 578.] Mr.

Leaf's statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter was delivering an ANCIENT lay he did not introduce any of the military gear--light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets--with which his audience were familiar. But when the singer delivers a new lay, which he himself has added to "the kernel," then he is "vivid and actual," and speaks of greaves and corslets, though he still cleaves in his new lay to the obsolete chariot, the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to weapons of bronze. He is a sadly inconsistent new poet!

Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet "can be cut out," as probably "some or all these are additions to the text made at a time when it seemed absurd to think of a man in full armour without a corslet." [Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. 577.] Thus the reciters, after all, did not spare "the old material" in the matter of corslets. The late singers have thus been "conservatively tenacious" in clinging to chariots, weapons of bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while they have also been "vivid and actual" and "up to date" in the way of introducing everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour unknown, by the theory, in "the old material which is the substance of their song." By the way, they have not even spared the shield of the old material, for it was of leather or wood (we have no trace of metal plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the singer, while retaining the size of it, has added a plating of bronze, which we have every reason to suppose that Mycenaean shields of the prime did not present to the stone-headed arrow.

This theory of singers, who are at once "conservatively tenacious" of the old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears to us to be logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I, observed the same inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to remark again on its presence in the work of that great archaeologist. The inconsistency is inseparable from theories of expansion through several centuries. "Many a method," says Mr. Leaf, "has been proposed which, up to a certain point, seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which returned to plague the inventor." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.]

This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts from the hypothesis that the poems are the product of several centuries will work. The "residuum" is the element which cannot be fitted into any such hypothesis. But try the hypothesis that the poems are the product of a single age, and all is harmonious. There is no baffling "residuum."

The poet describes the details of a definite age, not that of the Mycenaean bloom, not that of 900-600 A.D.

We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to the huge size of the shield, while altering its material; and also that the same men, for the sake of being "actual" and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and greaves not only into new lays, but into pa.s.sages of lays by old poets who had never heard of such things. Consequently, the poetic descriptions of arms and armour must be explained on some other theory.

If the poet, again, as others suppose--Mr. Ridgeway for one--knew such bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as extending from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields are not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter?

[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece, vol. i pp. 453, 471._] Such a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2 ozs., [Footnote: _Ibid., vol._ i. p. 462.] and a strong man might walk or run under it.

Homer's shields would be twice as heavy, at least, though, even then, not too heavy for a Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that the round bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and Tarquinii, cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions of huge shields. They are too small. But it is perfectly possible, or rather highly probable, that in the poet's day shields of various sizes and patterns coexisted.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SHIELDS

Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the graves of the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-hides of Homeric shields, though we do find gold ornaments supposed to have been attached to shields. There is no evidence that the Mycenaean shield was plated with bronze. But if we judge from their shape, as represented in works of Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig.

2) with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up," and pinched at both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a section of a cylinder; only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same figure. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's Excavations_, p. 192.] A gold necklet found at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean shield. [Footnote: _Excavations in Cyprus_, pl. vii. fig. 604. A. S.

Murray, 1900.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2. DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.]

There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the Acropolis at Athens.

They resemble "two circles joined together so as to intersect one another slightly," or "a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary in size from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware, or gla.s.s. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one, in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short, these little objects are representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the "schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only the shield which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig.