Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents of corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines which disprove it. Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise whatever passage does not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut, supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of Thetis to Hephaestus for the very purpose of dragging in a corslet. [Footnote: Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, xviii. 460, 461.] If there is no objection to a line except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the logic in excising the line because one happens to think that corslets are later than the oldest parts of the _Iliad_? Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case mention a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow strikes Diomede "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the corslet." Thirteen lines later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the swift shaft right through out of Diomede's shoulder, and the blood darted up through the pliant _chiton_." We do not know what the word here translated "pliant" [Greek: streptos] means, and Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of mail, chain, or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this case, if a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or rings of bronze be meant, _gualon_ cannot mean a large "plate," as it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that [Greek: streptos chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p, 306.] Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As usual, we come to a deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one can see that, in the space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator who wrote V. i 12, i 13 could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing a corslet in V. 99; and even if the poet could forget, which is out of the question, the editor of 540 B.C. was simply defrauding his employer, Piaistratus, if he did not bring a remedy for the stupid fault of the poet. When this or that hero is not specifically said to be wearing a corslet, it is usually because the poet has no occasion to mention it, though, as we have seen, a man is occasionally smitten, in the midriff, say, without any remark on the flimsy piece of mail.