Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that "bronze chitoned" is probably "a picturesque expression... and refers to the bronze-covered shield." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, i. 578.] The breastplate covered the upper part of the _chiton_, and so might be called a "bronze _chiton_," above all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of a real _chiton_, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The process of evolution might be from a padded linen _chiton_ ([Greek: linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as by nervous Protestants during Oates's "Popish Plot"), to a leathern _chiton_, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to plates. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. pp. 309, 310.] Here, in this armoured _chiton_, would be an object that a poet might readily call "a _chiton_ of bronze." But that, if he lived in the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows, _CHITONS_ were not worn at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a monstrous double-bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of shield, "a _bronze chiton_," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather cloak" would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion. According to Mr. Myres (1899) the "stock line" in the _Iliad_, about piercing a [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] or corslet, was inserted "to satisfy the practical criticisms of a corslet-wearing age," the age of the later poets, the Age of Iron. But why did not such practical critics object to the constant presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their age out of date, if they objected to the absence from the poems of the corslets with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line about the [Greek: poludaidalos] corslet was already old, but had merely meant "many-glittering body clothing"--garments set with the golden discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet, he says, would not be "many glittering," but would reflect "a single star of light." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies._ 1899] Now, first, even if the star were a single star, it would be as "many glittering" when the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the star that danced when Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary corslets of the Iron Age were NOT "many glittering," practical corslet-wearing critics would ask the poet, "why do you call corslets 'many glittering'?" Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely be translated "a thing of much art," and Greek corslets were incised with ornamental designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet report "a very remarkable 'Mycemean' bronze breastplate" from Crete, which "shows four female draped figures, the two central ones holding a wreath over a bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are apparently dancing.