Coming to men's dress in Homer, we do not know exactly how long the ordinary Homeric chiton was. If the word τερμιόεις means "reaching to the feet," it would apply well to a shield of the huge Mycenaean make, and to a chiton, and it is used of both.[1] But some take it to mean "fringed," which cannot apply to the Mycenaean shield, or to chitons as represented anywhere except perhaps in the Warrior Vase (sub-Mycenæan) of Mycenae. No brooches are mentioned as fastening chitons, and it rather appears that these resembled the very short-sleeved, rather loose, and not girdled sewn smock of the lowest figure in the Mycenaean "siege vase." Eumaeus the swine-herd belts his chiton with a girdle when he goes out to his work.[2] Probably, therefore, it reached the feet, and had to be "kirtled up." Now the curt jerkin of seventh to sixth century art needs no tucking up, it merely covers the buttocks. The material was linen, if the name chiton be derived from a Semitic word for linen. When we read that the tunic of Odysseus was "shining like the skin of a dried onion, so soft it was, and bright as the sun," it is not quite clear whether it was as _tight_, or as bright, as the onion skin; and perhaps its brilliance suggests that it was of silk, rather than of linen, unstarched. A person who comes fresh from Homer to the study of Greek archaic art, of the latest eighth, the seventh, and the sixth centuries, cannot but be struck by the fact, rather neglected by writers on costume, that the men are _not_ wearing the Homeric chiton, which needs to be kirtled up in active life. On the other hand, "on the earliest vases the men are often nude, with the exception of a loin-cloth or pair of tight fitting bathing-drawers."[3] This is the usual pre-Achaean dress of men in Minoan art. In archaic Greek art, men often wear either a very tight jerkin, covering the trunk, or, "on the earliest vases," the men have reverted from the Homeric chiton to the Aegean loin-cloth and bathing-drawers. Either this is the case, or the men, in fact, never wore the chiton in the "earliest" lays; the chiton, like the armour, as we are told, must have been introduced by the "tunic-trailing Ionians." Yet these Ionians, or any Greeks of the eighth to seventh centuries, in their art are represented as wearing loin-cloths, bathing-drawers, or curt tight jerkins needing not to be girdled up, except in cases of reverend seignors, in a house of repose, and at festivals. (See fig. 1.) [Illustration: Fig. 1.--Sacrifice to Athene--B.F. Archaic Vase-Painting] One or other or all of the tight curt men's garments--loin-cloth, bathing-drawers, or jerkin, reaching from the shoulders to just below the buttocks--was called in Ionia the _cypassis_, a term as much unknown to Homer as the article itself.