Note 34 — Chapter VIII

On the affair of Menelaus, see Leaf, vol. i. p. 581, and note I, where Mr. Leaf thinks the clasping of the corslet in front "an unreasonable arrangement." Mr. Murray (R. G. E. pp. 144, 145) also takes it that there was "a solid metal breast-plate." The term γύαλον (Iliad, v. 99), where an arrow hits "hard by Diomede's right shoulder the plate of his corslet," may refer to the broad plate over the shoulder-strap; some of the corslets of two metal plates have shoulder-straps in art. We really cannot expect to understand every detail with certainty, while we have no actual examples of the corslets and shields of many early centuries before our eyes. Mr. Ridgeway believes the body armour of the Achaeans to have been hauberks of bronze scales or small plates, not back-and breast-plates as in seventh and early sixth century art. He illustrates by many bronze studs found at Koracev and Ilijak in Bosnia, of the Glasinatz epoch (Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 435, 436). Such a hauberk would well correspond to that worn by "the bronze-shirted Achaeans." The hauberk would be "a shirt of leather," with "small pieces of bronze, either in the form of studs, or scales, or rings, or by the addition of plates of larger size" (Ibid. p. 310). The hauberk made of metal studs on leather seems to be illustrated in Schliemann's copy of a man on a very old vase from Tiryns, of a style apparently earlier than the art of the Dipylon (Schliemann, Tiryns, plate xvii.).