[25] Mr. Murray writes: "It is in this way" (in phalanxes) "that people are said to be going to fight before each great battle begins. But strangely enough it is not at all in this way that they really fight when the battle is fairly joined, in the heart of the poem. In the heart of the poem, when the real fight comes, it is as a rule purely Mycenaean." We do not know how Mycenaeans fought in a general engagement. But people, in Homer, do fight as they "are said to be going to tight," when a schiltrom of spears is formed and is assailed, as in _Iliad_, xiii. 125-205. There the Trojan charge is checked by the hedge of spears. The general assault, the combined resistance, and the conduct of the most prominent men in defence and attack, is described, just as, at Waterloo and Culloden, historians describe the general conflict, and also the individual prowess of Shaw, Gillie Macbean, and others. [26] Mülder, _op. cit_. p. 32. [27] Mülder, op. cit. p. 36. [28] _R. G. E._ 133, note 1. Thus the hortatory eloquence of Poseidon (xiii. 108 fi.) is an echo of Callinus's stimulating appeal to the young to bestir themselves, when the country is at war. Callinus. fr. 1. Thus Poseidon cannot say "young men, don't be slack," without quoting an Ionian elegiac poet! (Mülder, pp. 12, 13). It is waste of time to discuss criticism of this sort, especially as, even if there were any borrowing, the Ionian elegy-maker must be reminiscent of the _Iliad_, as Tyrtaeus is in a familiar passage. CHAPTER VIII MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR. As the following remarks are inevitably full of minute and complex detail, it may be well to say briefly what I wish to prove. According to the view of many critics, German and English, the "early lays" of the _Iliad_ were composed when men wore smocks or chitons, like the Greeks of the historic ages. In war, on this theory, they wore no armour save the huge body--covering shields of Aegean art, but _not_ the loin-cloth or the bathing-drawers which were the sole costume of the Aegean fighting man. The Homeric warrior of the "early lays" was thus accoutred; like the Aegean warrior, he had no body armour save the shield, but, by way of dress, he had the smock or chiton, not the loin-cloth. On this theory the corslet did not come into vogue till the eighth to seventh century. Then it arrived with the _zoster_, or mailed belt, and the _mitrê_, or mailed kirtle. When these had been accepted, the huge early shield, slung by a baldric, was discarded for the round or oval parrying buckler, blazoned with a device, and carried on the left arm. The smock or chiton continued to be worn. Ionian poets interpolated their corslet, mitre, zoster, and greaves into passages of old lays that originally knew no such armour. The result was confused nonsense.