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 cannot argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through the "_bronze chiton_" of Alcathoeus (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons these lines "probably an interpolation to turn the linen _chiton_, the rending of which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we ask why, if an editor or rhapsodist went through the _Iliad_ introducing corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their absence because they are not mentioned? 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 _thorex_ or 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 _Iliad_ seem 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.