Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the _Iliad_, has the largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot have been circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the battle with the Wooers in the _Odyssey;_ yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots, yet use small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never own a chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel. Aias and his shield we meet in _Iliad_, VII. 206-220. "He clothed himself upon his flesh in _all_ his armour" ([Greek: teuchea]), to quote Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only _describes_ his shield: his "towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his home in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze." The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an age of leather shields the Currier is still the shield-maker, though now the shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition regarded the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a local hero of great influence, display this shield as the badge of the AEginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed, or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the _waist_, or pinched--in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield; the same device occurs on a Mycenaean ring from AEgina in the British Museum. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiii. 213-216.]