The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they were familiar, did stuff the _Iliad_ full 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 _gualon_ appears to mean a hollow, or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the mechanism (see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides. Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull men. When their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we are not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions of pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore cannot have been familiar with, and, in that case, would not introduce.
Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the _Iliad_ (III. 357-360)--it recurs in another case: "Through the bright shield went the ponderous spear, and through the inwrought" (very artfully wrought), [Greek: poludaidalou] "breastplate it pressed on, and straight beside his flank it rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death." Mr. Leaf says, "It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a breastplate, there is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend aside and so to avoid the point...." But I suppose that the wearer, by a motion very natural, doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear merely grazed his flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend. The more he knew of corslets, the less would he mention an impossible circumstance in connection with a corslet.
Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory--though it is they who bring the corslets in--leave the corslets out! A man without shield, helmet, and spear calls himself "naked." Why did not these late poets, it is asked, make him take off his corslet, if he had one, as well as his shield? The case occurs in XXII. 111-113,124-125. Hector thinks of laying aside helmet, spear, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles. "But then he will slay me naked," that is, unarmed. "He still had his corslet," the critics say, "so how could he be naked? or, if he had no corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the corslet age." Now certainly Hector _was_ wearing a corslet, which he had taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would, however, be "naked" or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear, and shield, because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as he did), or lightly drive the spear through the corslet, which, we have proved, was no sound defence against a spear at close quarters, though useful against chance arrows, and occasionally against spears spent by traversing the shield.