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. We next learn that no corslet occurs in the _Odyssey_, or in _Iliad_, Book X., called "very late": Mr. Leaf suggests that it is of the seventh century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad, Book X., are really very late, their authors and interpolators were perfectly familiar with Ionian corslets. Why did they leave corslets out, while their predecessors and contemporaries were introducing them all up and down the _Iliad_? In fact, in Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they have been called up to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go as spies they wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no corslet is mentioned in Nestor's arms in his tent. But are we to explain this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the author of _Iliad_, Book X., and all the many authors and editors of the _Odyssey_ happened to be profound archaeologists, and, unlike their contemporaries, the later poets and interpolators of the _Iliad_, had formed the theory that corslets were not known at the time of the siege of Troy and therefore must not be mentioned? This is quite incredible. No hypothesis can be more improbable. We cannot imagine late Ionian rhapsodists listening to the _Iliad_, and saying, "These poets of the _Iliad_ are all wrong: at the date of the Mycenaean prime, as every educated man knows, corslets were not yet in fashion. So we must have no corslets in the _Odyssey_?"