It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and classical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often of great size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by belts; and, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and _zosters_. There is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a _targe_ should not also wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened; the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed. To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the _Iliad_, are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.] There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold ornaments, which could only belong to shields, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 237.] were found, but bronze shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep out bronze-headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved. Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists, we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.] At other times they are said to introduce recklessly part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets, while sternly excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of very late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that moment.