It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do the poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence of representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be altered by fresh discoveries. In _Iliad_, II. 388, the shield (_aspis_) is spoken of as "covering a man about" ([Greek: _amphibrotae_]), while, in the heat of battle, the baldric (_telamon_), or belt of the shield, "shall be wet with sweat." The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth century, the "double targe," worn suspended from the neck by a belt. Such a shield covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century A.D., [Footnote: _Catalogue of Scottish National Antiquities_, p. 375.] so also in the Bayeux tapestry, [Footnote: Gautier, _Chanson de Roland_. Seventh edition, pp. 393, 394.] and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132). The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions," which we might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the words do mean that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a spear which grazes a shield--a shield which was _[Greek: panton eesae]_, "every way equal"--rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner circle of leather (_Iliad_, XX. 273-281). But the passage is not unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet _[Greek: eukuklykos]_, "of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was "made of circular plates." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573.] As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean "circular." Mr. Leaf, annotating _Iliad_, I. 306, says that this sense is "intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates _[Greek: panton eesae]_ as "well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the epithets in the natural sense, as "circular." [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos_, p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.]