Homer, then, describes armour _later_ than that of the Mycenaean prime, when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave suggest that corslets existed. Homer's men, on the other hand, have, at least in certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and bronze cuirasses of no great resisting power, perhaps in various stages of evolution, from the byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to the breastplate and backplate, though the plates for breast and back certainly appear to be usually worn. It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea that "the original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with them who slept in the shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that for body armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes: "The armour of Homeric heroes corresponds closely to that of the Mykenaean age as we learn it from the monuments. The heroes wore no breastplate; their only defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean shield...." This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict the statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh century B.C., or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a breastplate had become absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield" (where (?) "and corslet played a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain number of lines and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically introduced into narratives which originally knew nothing of it." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 568.] On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield of later times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious exceptions," in which the shields are not said to be small or circular. [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p, 575.]